Aristotle

384 BC
Stagira, Chalcidice
322 BC (aged 61 or 62)
Died
Euboea
Nationality
Greek
Era
Ancient philosophy
Region
Western philosophy
Peripatetic school
School
Aristotelianism
Physics, Metaphysics, Poetry,
Theatre, Music, Rhetoric, Politics,
Main interests
Government, Ethics, Biology,
Zoology
Golden mean, Aristotelian logic,
Notable ideas syllogism, hexis, hylomorphism,
Aristotle's theory of soul
Aristotle (Ancient Greek: [aristotls], Aristotls) (384 BC 322 BC)[1] was a
Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His
writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic,
rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and
Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western
philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western
philosophy, encompassing ethics, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.
Born

Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their
influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by
Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be
accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic,
which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.
In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological
thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence
Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was well
known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as '" ' The First Teacher".
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue
ethics. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study
today. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues (Cicero described his literary
style as "a river of gold"),[2] it is thought that the majority of his writings are now lost and only
about one-third of the original works have survived.[

Life
Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose,"[4] was born in Stagira, Chalcidice, in 384 BC,
about 55 km (34 mi) east of modern-day Thessaloniki.[5] His father Nicomachus was the personal
physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Although there is little information on Aristotle'
childhood, he probably did spend some time then in the Macedonian palace, making his first
connections with the Macedonian monarchy.[6]
At about the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy.
Aristotle remained at the academy for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in 348/47 BC.
The traditional story about his departure reports that he was disappointed with the direction the
academy took after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus upon his death, although it is
possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato had died.[7]
He then traveled with Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in Asia Minor.
While in Asia, Aristotle traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they
researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Hermias's adoptive daughter
(or niece) Pythias. She bore him a daughter, whom they named Pythias. Soon after Hermias'
death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son Alexander in
343 BC.[8]

An early Islamic portrayal of Aristotle (r) and Alexander the Great (l).
Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave
lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.[9]
Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was
unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the

Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and
to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants".[9]
By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum.
Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife
Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a son whom
he named after his father, Nicomachus. According to the Suda, he also had an eromenos,
Palaephatus of Abydus.[10]
It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have
composed many of his works.[8] Aristotle wrote many dialogues, only fragments of which
survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part,
intended for widespread publication, as they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his
students. His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics,
Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics.
Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant
contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy,
embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on
aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and
theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works
constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been suggested that Aristotle was
probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.[11]
Near the end of Alexander's life, Alexander began to suspect plots against himself, and
threatened Aristotle in letters. Aristotle had made no secret of his contempt for Alexander's
pretense of divinity, and the king had executed Aristotle's grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor.
A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander's death, but
there is little evidence for this.[12]
Upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens once again flared. Eurymedon the
hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor. Aristotle fled the city to his
mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against
philosophy,"[13][14] a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Euboea
of natural causes within the same year: 322 BC. Aristotle named chief executor his student
Antipater and left a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.[15]

Thought
Logic

Aristotle portrayed in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle as a scholar of the 15th century A.D.
Main article: Term logic
For more details on this topic, see Non-Aristotelian logic.
With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his
conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in
mathematical logic. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that Aristotle's theory of logic
completely accounted for the core of deductive inference.
History
Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak
of'".[16] However, Plato reports that syntax was devised before him, by Prodicus of Ceos, who
was concerned by the correct use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics; the
earlier philosophers made frequent use of concepts like reductio ad absurdum in their
discussions, but never truly understood the logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with
logic; although he had a reasonable conception of a deductive system, he could never actually
construct one, thus he relied instead on his dialectic.[17]
Plato believed that deduction would simply follow from premises, hence he focused on
maintaining solid premises so that the conclusion would logically follow. Consequently, Plato
realized that a method for obtaining conclusions would be most beneficial. He never succeeded
in devising such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he
introduced his division method.[18]
Analytics and the Organon
Main article: Organon
What we today call Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labeled "analytics". The term
"logic" he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original
form, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of
Aristotle were compiled into six books in about the early 1st century AD:

1. Categories
2. On Interpretation
3. Prior Analytics
4. Posterior Analytics
5. Topics
6. On Sophistical Refutations
The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this
list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of
simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in On
Interpretation, to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics) and
dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations). The first three treatises form the core of the
logical theory stricto sensu: the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of
reasoning. There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely
the fourth book of Metaphysics.[17]

Aristotle's scientific method

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. Aristotle
gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and
experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst Plato gestures to
the heavens, representing his belief in The Forms.
For more details on this topic, see Aristotle's theory of universals.

"Aristotle" by Francesco Hayez (17911882)

Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle, however, finds the
universal in particular things, which he calls the essence of things, while Plato finds that the
universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or
exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of
particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means
the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) to a contemplation of particular
imitations of these. For Aristotle, "form" still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but
is "instantiated" in a particular substance (see Universals and particulars, below). In a certain
sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive
from a priori principles.[19]
In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the
phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics,
biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope of philosophy has become limited
to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a
major role. Today's philosophy tends to exclude empirical study of the natural world by means of
the scientific method. In contrast, Aristotle's philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all
facets of intellectual inquiry.
In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he
also would describe as "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a
different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science
(dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). By practical science,
he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine
arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.

If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of

Aristotelian philosophy would consist of: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including
Metaphysics, Physics and Mathematics; (3) Practical Philosophy and (4) Poetical Philosophy.
In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy and the
Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is
renowned today. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the objects of natural
science. Aristotle's metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no
original contributions to mathematics. He did, however, perform original research in the natural
sciences, e.g., botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, and several other
sciences.
Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Beginning in
the 16th century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's
work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate. His failings were largely due to the absence
of concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature. He had a conception of speed and
temperature, but no quantitative understanding of them, which was partly due to the absence of
basic experimental devices, like clocks and thermometers.
His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, a mixture of precocious
accuracy and curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he claimed that human males
have more teeth than females.[20] In a similar vein, John Philoponus, and later Galileo, showed by
simple experiments that Aristotle's theory that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is
incorrect.[21] On the other hand, Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was
made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out
(correctly, even if such reasoning was bound to be dismissed for a long time) that, given "current
astronomical demonstrations" that "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the
distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then ... the sun shines
on all the stars and the earth screens none of them."[22]
In places, Aristotle goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple observation and
over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such thinking without sufficient
facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's hypothesis requires far more rigorous
experimentation than that which Aristotle used to support his laws.
Aristotle also had some scientific blind spots. He posited a geocentric cosmology that we may
discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the 16th century.
From the 3rd century to the 16th century, the dominant view held that the Earth was the
rotational center of the universe.
Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the
Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back
science in this epoch.[23] However, Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into
forgetting his great advances in the many scientific fields. For instance, he founded logic as a
formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia.

Moreover, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change
and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.

Geology
As quoted from Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology:
He [Aristotle] refers to many examples of changes now constantly going on, and insists
emphatically on the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances
particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by
rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the
shallowing of the Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time ... He alludes ... to the
upheaving of one of the Eolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption. The changes of the earth,
he says, are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the
migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event
to be forgotten.
He says [12th chapter of his Meteorics] 'the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does
not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it
becomes land where it was sea, and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place
according to a certain system, and within a certain period.' The concluding observation is as
follows: 'As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can
have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their
operations, but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up and they perish;
and the sea also continually deserts some lands and invades others The same tracts, therefore, of
the earth are not some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the
course of time.'[24]

Physics
Main article: Physics (Aristotle)
Five elements
Main article: Classical element
Aristotle proposed a fifth element, aether, in addition to the four proposed earlier by Empedocles.

Earth, which is cold and dry; this corresponds to the modern idea of a solid.

Water, which is cold and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a liquid.

Air, which is hot and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a gas.

Fire, which is hot and dry; this corresponds to the modern ideas of plasma and heat.

Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly
bodies (stars and planets).

Each of the four earthly elements has its natural place. All that is earthly tends toward the center
of the universe, i.e., the center of the Earth. Water tends toward a sphere surrounding the center.
Air tends toward a sphere surrounding the water sphere. Fire tends toward the lunar sphere (in
which the Moon orbits). When elements are moved out of their natural place, they naturally
move back towards it. This is "natural motion"motion requiring no extrinsic cause. So, for
example, in water, earthy bodies sink while air bubbles rise up; in air, rain falls and flame rises.
Outside all the other spheres, the heavenly, fifth element, manifested in the stars and planets,
moves in the perfection of circles.
Motion
Main article: potentiality and actuality
Aristotle defined motion as the actuality of a potentiality as such.[25] Aquinas suggested that the
passage be understood literally; that motion can indeed be understood as the active fulfillment of
a potential, as a transition toward a potentially possible state. Because actuality and potentiality
are normally opposites in Aristotle, other commentators either suggest that the wording which
has come down to us is erroneous, or that the addition of the "as such" to the definition is critical
to understanding it.[26]
Causality, The Four Causes
Main article: Four causes
Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four different
types of simultaneously active causal factors:

Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus the
material cause of a table is wood, and the material cause of a car is rubber and steel. It is
not about action. It does not mean one domino knocks over another domino.

The formal cause is its form, i.e., the arrangement of that matter. It tells us what a thing
is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis
or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or
general laws, as the whole (i.e., macrostructure) is the cause of its parts, a relationship
known as the whole-part causation. Plainly put, the formal cause is the idea existing in
the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic,
determining cause, embodied in the matter. Formal cause could only refer to the essential
quality of causation. A simple example of the formal cause is the mental image or idea
that allows an artist, architect, or engineer to create his drawings.

The efficient cause is "the primary source", or that from which the change under
consideration proceeds. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change

of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the
sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of
causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause"
as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. So, take the two
dominoes, this time of equal weighting, the first is knocked over causing the second also
to fall over.

The final cause is its purpose, or that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done,
including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final cause or
teleos is the purpose or function that something is supposed to serve. This covers modern
ideas of motivating causes, such as volition, need, desire, ethics, or spiritual beliefs.

Additionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally, as hard work
causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the one is as the
beginning of change, the other as the goal. (Thus Aristotle first suggested a reciprocal or circular
causality as a relation of mutual dependence or influence of cause upon effect). Moreover,
Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of contrary effects; its presence and
absence may result in different outcomes. Simply it is the goal or purpose that brings about an
event. Our two dominoes require someone or something to intentionally knock over the first
domino, since it cannot fall of its own accord.
Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental (chance)
causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as actual, particular or
generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes, so that generic effects assigned to
generic causes, particular effects to particular causes, operating causes to actual effects.
Essentially, causality does not suggest a temporal relation between the cause and the effect.
Optics
Aristotle held more accurate theories on some optical concepts than other philosophers of his
day. The earliest known written evidence of a camera obscura can be found in Aristotle's
documentation of such a device in 350 BC in Problemata. Aristotle's apparatus contained a dark
chamber that had a single small hole, or aperture, to allow for sunlight to enter. Aristotle used the
device to make observations of the sun and noted that no matter what shape the hole was, the sun
would still be correctly displayed as a round object. In modern cameras, this is analogous to the
diaphragm. Aristotle also made the observation that when the distance between the aperture and
the surface with the image increased, the image was magnified.[27]
Chance and spontaneity
According to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of some things, distinguishable from
other types of cause. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things. It is
"from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous does not come from chance). For
a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of "chance" it might be better to think of
"coincidence": Something takes place by chance if a person sets out with the intent of having one
thing take place, but with the result of another thing (not intended) taking place.

For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person willing to donate a
substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the person donating, not for
the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose, Aristotle would call the
collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of chance. It must be unusual that
something happens by chance. In other words, if something happens all or most of the time, we
cannot say that it is by chance.
There is also more specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that can only apply to
human beings, since it is in the sphere of moral actions. According to Aristotle, luck must
involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable of deliberation and choice.
"What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance".[28]

Metaphysics

Statue of Aristotle (1915) by Cipri Adolf Bermann at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau
Main article: Metaphysics (Aristotle)
Aristotle defines metaphysics as "the knowledge of immaterial being," or of "being in the highest
degree of abstraction." He refers to metaphysics as "first philosophy", as well as "the theologic
science."
Substance, potentiality and actuality
See also: Potentiality and actuality (Aristotle)
Aristotle examines the concepts of substance and essence (ousia) in his Metaphysics (Book VII),
and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form. In book

VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as the substratum, or the stuff of which it is
composed. For example, the matter of a house is the bricks, stones, timbers etc., or whatever
constitutes the potential house, while the form of the substance is the actual house, namely
'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia (see also predicables) that let us define
something as a house. The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and
the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form.[29]
With regard to the change (kinesis) and its causes now, as he defines in his Physics and On
Generation and Corruption 319b320a, he distinguishes the coming to be from:
1. growth and diminution, which is change in quantity;
2. locomotion, which is change in space; and
3. alteration, which is change in quality.
The coming to be is a change where nothing persists of which the resultant is a property. In that
particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (entelecheia)
in association with the matter and the form.
Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing, or being acted upon, if the
conditions are right and it is not prevented by something else. For example, the seed of a plant in
the soil is potentially (dynamei) plant, and if is not prevented by something, it will become a
plant. Potentially beings can either 'act' (poiein) or 'be acted upon' (paschein), which can be
either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate being
acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise
acting).
Actuality is the fulfillment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end (telos) is the principle
of every change, and for the sake of the end exists potentiality, therefore actuality is the end.
Referring then to our previous example, we could say that an actuality is when a plant does one
of the activities that plants do.
"For that for the sake of which a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the
end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For
animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see."[30]
In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both the activity
of building and the form of the final house are actualities, which is also a final cause or end.
Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in
time and in substantiality.
With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the
problem of the unity of the beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since,
according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However,

according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the
same thing.[31]
Universals and particulars
Main article: Aristotle's theory of universals
Aristotle's predecessor, Plato, argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either
a property, or a relation to other things. When we look at an apple, for example, we see an apple,
and we can also analyze a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a
universal form of an apple. Moreover, we can place an apple next to a book, so that we can speak
of both the book and apple as being next to each other.
Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For
example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper
universal form. Bertrand Russell is a contemporary philosopher who agreed with Plato on the
existence of "uninstantiated universals".
Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated. Aristotle
argued that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. According to Aristotle,
if a universal exists, either as a particular or a relation, then there must have been, must be
currently, or must be in the future, something on which the universal can be predicated.
Consequently, according to Aristotle, if it is not the case that some universal can be predicated to
an object that exists at some period of time, then it does not exist.
In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. As Plato spoke of the
world of the forms, a location where all universal forms subsist, Aristotle maintained that
universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to
Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.

Biology and medicine

In Aristotelian science, especially in biology, things he saw himself have stood the test of time
better than his retelling of the reports of others, which contain error and superstition. He
dissected animals but not humans; his ideas on how the human body works have been almost
entirely superseded.
Empirical research program

Octopus swimming

Torpedo fuscomaculata

Leopard shark
Aristotle is the earliest natural historian whose work has survived in some detail. Aristotle
certainly did research on the natural history of Lesbos, and the surrounding seas and
neighbouring areas. The works that reflect this research, such as History of Animals, Generation
of Animals, and Parts of Animals, contain some observations and interpretations, along with
sundry myths and mistakes. The most striking passages are about the sea-life visible from
observation on Lesbos and available from the catches of fishermen. His observations on catfish,
electric fish (Torpedo) and angler-fish are detailed, as is his writing on cephalopods, namely,
Octopus, Sepia (cuttlefish) and the paper nautilus (Argonauta argo). His description of the
hectocotyl arm was about two thousand years ahead of its time, and widely disbelieved until its
rediscovery in the 19th century. He separated the aquatic mammals from fish, and knew that
sharks and rays were part of the group he called Selach (selachians).[32]
Another good example of his methods comes from the Generation of Animals in which Aristotle
describes breaking open fertilized chicken eggs at intervals to observe when visible organs were
generated.

He gave accurate descriptions of ruminants' four-chambered fore-stomachs, and of the

ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark Mustelus mustelus.[33]
Classification of living things
Aristotle's classification of living things contains some elements which still existed in the 19th
century. What the modern zoologist would call vertebrates and invertebrates, Aristotle called
'animals with blood' and 'animals without blood' (he did not know that complex invertebrates do
make use of hemoglobin, but of a different kind from vertebrates). Animals with blood were
divided into live-bearing (humans and mammals), and egg-bearing (birds and fish). Invertebrates
('animals without blood') are insects, crustacea (divided into non-shelled cephalopods and
shelled) and testacea (molluscs). In some respects, this incomplete classification is better than
that of Linnaeus, who crowded the invertebrata together into two groups, Insecta and Vermes
(worms).
For Charles Singer, "Nothing is more remarkable than [Aristotle's] efforts to [exhibit] the
relationships of living things as a scala naturae"[32] Aristotle's History of Animals classified
organisms in relation to a hierarchical "Ladder of Life" (scala naturae), placing them according
to complexity of structure and function so that higher organisms showed greater vitality and
ability to move.[34]
Aristotle believed that intellectual purposes, i.e., final causes, guided all natural processes. Such
a teleological view gave Aristotle cause to justify his observed data as an expression of formal
design. Noting that "no animal has, at the same time, both tusks and horns," and "a single-hooved
animal with two horns I have never seen," Aristotle suggested that Nature, giving no animal both
horns and tusks, was staving off vanity, and giving creatures faculties only to such a degree as
they are necessary. Noting that ruminants had multiple stomachs and weak teeth, he supposed the
first was to compensate for the latter, with Nature trying to preserve a type of balance.[35]
In a similar fashion, Aristotle believed that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of
perfection rising from plants on up to man, the scala naturae or Great Chain of Being.[36] His
system had eleven grades, arranged according "to the degree to which they are infected with
potentiality", expressed in their form at birth. The highest animals laid warm and wet creatures
alive, the lowest bore theirs cold, dry, and in thick eggs.
Aristotle also held that the level of a creature's perfection was reflected in its form, but not
preordained by that form. Ideas like this, and his ideas about souls, are not regarded as science at
all in modern times.
He placed emphasis on the type(s) of soul an organism possessed, asserting that plants possess a
vegetative soul, responsible for reproduction and growth, animals a vegetative and a sensitive
soul, responsible for mobility and sensation, and humans a vegetative, a sensitive, and a rational
soul, capable of thought and reflection.[37]

Aristotle, in contrast to earlier philosophers, but in accordance with the Egyptians, placed the
rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain.[38] Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and
thought, which generally went against previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon.[39]
Successor: Theophrastus

The frontispiece to a 1644 version of the expanded and illustrated edition of Historia Plantarum
(ca. 1200), which was originally written around 200 BC.
Main articles: Theophrastus and Historia Plantarum
Aristotle's successor at the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote a series of books on botanythe
History of Plantswhich survived as the most important contribution of antiquity to botany,
even into the Middle Ages. Many of Theophrastus' names survive into modern times, such as
carpos for fruit, and pericarpion for seed vessel.
Rather than focus on formal causes, as Aristotle did, Theophrastus suggested a mechanistic
scheme, drawing analogies between natural and artificial processes, and relying on Aristotle's
concept of the efficient cause. Theophrastus also recognized the role of sex in the reproduction of
some higher plants, though this last discovery was lost in later ages.[40]
Influence on Hellenistic medicine
For more details on this topic, see Medicine in ancient Greece.

After Theophrastus, the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in
Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly.[41] It is not until the age of
Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found.
The first medical teacher at Alexandria, Herophilus of Chalcedon, corrected Aristotle, placing
intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus
also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not.
[42]
Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of
Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would
remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. Ernst Mayr
claimed that there was "nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen
until the Renaissance."[43] Aristotle's ideas of natural history and medicine survived, but they
were generally taken unquestioningly.[44]

Psychology
Aristotle's psychology, given in his treatise On the Soul (peri psyche, often known by its Latin
title De Anima), posits three kinds of soul ("psyches"): the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and
the rational soul. Humans have a rational soul. This kind of soul is capable of the same powers as
the other kinds: Like the vegetative soul it can grow and nourish itself; like the sensitive soul it
can experience sensations and move locally. The unique part of the human, rational soul is its
ability to receive forms of other things and compare them.
For Aristotle, the soul (psyche) was a simpler concept than it is for us today. By soul he simply
meant the form of a living being. Since all beings are composites of form and matter, the form of
living beings is that which endows them with what is specific to living beings, e.g. the ability to
initiate movement (or in the case of plants, growth and chemical transformations, which Aristotle
considers types of movement).[45]

Practical philosophy
Ethics
Main article: Aristotelian ethics
Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical rather than theoretical study, i.e., one aimed at
becoming good and doing good rather than knowing for its own sake. He wrote several treatises
on ethics, including most notably, the Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function (ergon) of a thing. An eye is only a
good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle
reasoned that humans must have a function specific to humans, and that this function must be an
activity of the psuch (normally translated as soul) in accordance with reason (logos). Aristotle
identified such an optimum activity of the soul as the aim of all human deliberate action,
eudaimonia, generally translated as "happiness" or sometimes "well being". To have the potential

of ever being happy in this way necessarily requires a good character (thik aret), often
translated as moral (or ethical) virtue (or excellence).[46]
Aristotle taught that to achieve a virtuous and potentially happy character requires a first stage of
having the fortune to be habituated not deliberately, but by teachers, and experience, leading to a
later stage in which one consciously chooses to do the best things. When the best people come to
live life this way their practical wisdom (phronesis) and their intellect (nous) can develop with
each other towards the highest possible human virtue, the wisdom of an accomplished theoretical
or speculative thinker, or in other words, a philosopher.[47]
Politics
Main article: Politics (Aristotle)
Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of
abstract reason that is, reason divorced from experience.
Benjamin Wiker[48]
In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in
his work titled Politics. Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community. Moreover, he
considered the city to be prior in importance to the family which in turn is prior to the individual,
"for the whole must of necessity be prior to the part".[49] He also famously stated that "man is by
nature a political animal". Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than
like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others. Aristotle's
conception of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in
this manner.[50]
The common modern understanding of a political community as a modern state is quite different
to Aristotle's understanding. Although he was aware of the existence and potential of larger
empires, the natural community according to Aristotle was the city (polis) which functions as a
political "community" or "partnership" (koinnia). The aim of the city is not just to avoid
injustice or for economic stability, but rather to allow at least some citizens the possibility to live
a good life, and to perform beautiful acts: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore,
as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together." This is distinguished
from modern approaches, beginning with social contract theory, according to which individuals
leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences."[51]
Rhetoric and poetics
Main articles: Rhetoric (Aristotle) and Poetics (Aristotle)
Aristotle considered epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry and music to be imitative,
each varying in imitation by medium, object, and manner.[52] For example, music imitates with
the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, and poetry with
language. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic
imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average.
Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation through narrative or character, through

change or no change, and through drama or no drama.[53] Aristotle believed that imitation is
natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankind's advantages over animals.[54]
While it is believed that Aristotle's Poetics comprised two books one on comedy and one on
tragedy only the portion that focuses on tragedy has survived. Aristotle taught that tragedy is
composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry.[55]
The characters in a tragedy are merely a means of driving the story; and the plot, not the
characters, is the chief focus of tragedy. Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity and fear,
and is meant to effect the catharsis of those same emotions. Aristotle concludes Poetics with a
discussion on which, if either, is superior: epic or tragic mimesis. He suggests that because
tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as
spectacle and music, is more unified, and achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it can
be considered superior to epic.[56]
Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had
a special interest in the riddles of the Delphic Oracle and studied the fables of Aesop.[57]

Views on women
Main article: Aristotle's views on women
Aristotle's analysis of procreation describes an active, ensouling masculine element bringing life
to an inert, passive female element. On this ground, feminists have accused Aristotle of
misogyny[58] and sexism.[59] However, Aristotle gave equal weight to women's happiness as he did
to men's, and commented in his Rhetoric that a society cannot be happy unless women are happy
too.

Loss and preservation of his works

See also: Corpus Aristotelicum
Modern scholarship reveals that Aristotle's "lost" works stray considerably in characterization[60]
from the surviving Aristotelian corpus. Whereas the lost works appear to have been originally
written with an intent for subsequent publication, the surviving works do not appear to have been
so.[60] Rather the surviving works mostly resemble lecture notes unintended for publication.[60]
The authenticity of a portion of the surviving works as originally Aristotelian is also today held
suspect, with some books duplicating or summarizing each other, the authorship of one book
questioned and another book considered to be unlikely Aristotle's at all.[60]
Some of the individual works within the corpus, including the Constitution of Athens, are
regarded by most scholars as products of Aristotle's "school," perhaps compiled under his
direction or supervision. Others, such as On Colors, may have been produced by Aristotle's
successors at the Lyceum, e.g., Theophrastus and Straton. Still others acquired Aristotle's name
through similarities in doctrine or content, such as the De Plantis, possibly by Nicolaus of
Damascus. Other works in the corpus include medieval palmistries and astrological and magical
texts whose connections to Aristotle are purely fanciful and self-promotional.[61]

According to a distinction that originates with Aristotle himself, his writings are divisible into
two groups: the "exoteric" and the "esoteric".[62] Most scholars have understood this as a
distinction between works Aristotle intended for the public (exoteric), and the more technical
works intended for use within the school (esoteric). Modern scholars commonly assume these
latter to be Aristotle's own (unpolished) lecture notes (or in some cases possible notes by his
students).[63] However, one classic scholar offers an alternative interpretation. The 5th century
neoplatonist Ammonius Hermiae writes that Aristotle's writing style is deliberately obscurantist
so that "good people may for that reason stretch their mind even more, whereas empty minds that
are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences
like these."[64]
Another common assumption is that none of the exoteric works is extant that all of Aristotle's
extant writings are of the esoteric kind. Current knowledge of what exactly the exoteric writings
were like is scant and dubious, though many of them may have been in dialogue form.
(Fragments of some of Aristotle's dialogues have survived.) Perhaps it is to these that Cicero
refers when he characterized Aristotle's writing style as "a river of gold";[65] it is hard for many
modern readers to accept that one could seriously so admire the style of those works currently
available to us.[63] However, some modern scholars have warned that we cannot know for certain
that Cicero's praise was reserved specifically for the exoteric works; a few modern scholars have
actually admired the concise writing style found in Aristotle's extant works.[66]
One major question in the history of Aristotle's works, then, is how were the exoteric writings all
lost, and how did the ones we now possess come to us?[67] The story of the original manuscripts
of the esoteric treatises is described by Strabo in his Geography and Plutarch in his Parallel
Lives.[68] The manuscripts were left from Aristotle to his successor Theophrastus, who in turn
willed them to Neleus of Scepsis. Neleus supposedly took the writings from Athens to Scepsis,
where his heirs let them languish in a cellar until the 1st century BC, when Apellicon of Teos
discovered and purchased the manuscripts, bringing them back to Athens. According to the story,
Apellicon tried to repair some of the damage that was done during the manuscripts' stay in the
basement, introducing a number of errors into the text. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla occupied
Athens in 86 BC, he carried off the library of Apellicon to Rome, where they were first published
in 60 BC by the grammarian Tyrannion of Amisus and then by the philosopher Andronicus of
Rhodes.[69][70]
Carnes Lord attributes the popular belief in this story to the fact that it provides "the most
plausible explanation for the rapid eclipse of the Peripatetic school after the middle of the third
century, and for the absence of widespread knowledge of the specialized treatises of Aristotle
throughout the Hellenistic period, as well as for the sudden reappearance of a flourishing
Aristotelianism during the first century B.C."[71] Lord voices a number of reservations concerning
this story, however. First, the condition of the texts is far too good for them to have suffered
considerable damage followed by Apellicon's inexpert attempt at repair.
Second, there is "incontrovertible evidence," Lord says, that the treatises were in circulation
during the time in which Strabo and Plutarch suggest they were confined within the cellar in
Scepsis. Third, the definitive edition of Aristotle's texts seems to have been made in Athens some
fifty years before Andronicus supposedly compiled his. And fourth, ancient library catalogues

predating Andronicus' intervention list an Aristotelian corpus quite similar to the one we
currently possess. Lord sees a number of post-Aristotelian interpolations in the Politics, for
example, but is generally confident that the work has come down to us relatively intact.
On the one hand, the surviving texts of Aristotle do not derive from finished literary texts, but
rather from working drafts used within Aristotle's school, as opposed, on the other hand, to the
dialogues and other "exoteric" texts which Aristotle published more widely during his lifetime.
The consensus is that Andronicus of Rhodes collected the esoteric works of Aristotle's school
which existed in the form of smaller, separate works, distinguished them from those of
Theophrastus and other Peripatetics, edited them, and finally compiled them into the more
cohesive, larger works as they are known today.[72]

Legacy

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, by Rembrandt

More than 2300 years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who
ever lived. He contributed to almost every field of human knowledge then in existence, and he
was the founder of many new fields. According to the philosopher Bryan Magee, "it is doubtful
whether any human being has ever known as much as he did".[73] Among countless other
achievements, Aristotle was the founder of formal logic,[74] pioneered the study of zoology, and
left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific
method.[75][76]
Despite these achievements, the influence of Aristotle's errors is considered by some to have held
back science considerably. Bertrand Russell notes that "almost every serious intellectual advance
has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine". Russell also refers to Aristotle's
ethics as "repulsive", and calls his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy".
Russell notes that these errors make it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one
remembers how large of an advance he made upon all of his predecessors.[8]

Later Greek philosophers

The immediate influence of Aristotle's work was felt as the Lyceum grew into the Peripatetic
school. Aristotle's notable students included Aristoxenus, Dicaearchus, Demetrius of Phalerum,
Eudemos of Rhodes, Harpalus, Hephaestion, Meno, Mnason of Phocis, Nicomachus, and
Theophrastus. Aristotle's influence over Alexander the Great is seen in the latter's bringing with
him on his expedition a host of zoologists, botanists, and researchers. He had also learned a great
deal about Persian customs and traditions from his teacher. Although his respect for Aristotle was
diminished as his travels made it clear that much of Aristotle's geography was clearly wrong,
when the old philosopher released his works to the public, Alexander complained "Thou hast not
done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those
doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men's common property?"[77]

Influence on Byzantine scholars

Greek Christian scribes played a crucial role in the preservation of Aristotle by copying all the
extant Greek language manuscripts of the corpus. The first Greek Christians to comment
extensively on Aristotle were John Philoponus, Elias, and David in the sixth century, and
Stephen of Alexandria in the early seventh century.[78] John Philoponus stands out for having
attempted a fundamental critique of Aristotle's views on the eternity of the world, movement, and
other elements of Aristotelian thought.[79] After a hiatus of several centuries, formal commentary
by Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus reappears in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries,
apparently sponsored by Anna Comnena.[80]

Influence on Islamic theologians

Aristotle was one of the most revered Western thinkers in early Islamic theology. Most of the
still extant works of Aristotle,[81] as well as a number of the original Greek commentaries, were
translated into Arabic and studied by Muslim philosophers, scientists and scholars. Averroes,
Avicenna and Alpharabius, who wrote on Aristotle in great depth, also influenced Thomas
Aquinas and other Western Christian scholastic philosophers. Alkindus considered Aristotle as
the outstanding and unique representative of philosophy[82] and Averroes spoke of Aristotle as the
"exemplar" for all future philosophers.[83] Medieval Muslim scholars regularly described Aristotle
as the "First Teacher".[84] The title "teacher" was first given to Aristotle by Muslim scholars, and
was later used by Western philosophers (as in the famous poem of Dante) who were influenced
by the tradition of Islamic philosophy.[85]
In accordance with the Greek theorists, the Muslims considered Aristotle to be a dogmatic
philosopher, the author of a closed system, and believed that Aristotle shared with Plato essential
tenets of thought. Some went so far as to credit Aristotle himself with neo-Platonic metaphysical
ideas.[81]

Influence on Western Christian theologians

With the loss of the study of ancient Greek in the early medieval Latin West, Aristotle was
practically unknown there from c. AD 600 to c. 1100 except through the Latin translation of the
Organon made by Boethius. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, interest in Aristotle revived
and Latin Christians had translations made, both from Arabic translations, such as those by

Gerard of Cremona,[86] and from the original Greek, such as those by James of Venice and
William of Moerbeke.
After Thomas Aquinas wrote his theology, working from Moerbeke's translations, the demand
for Aristotle's writings grew and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a
revival of Aristotelianism in Europe that continued into the Renaissance.[87] Aristotle is referred
to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. See Summa Theologica,
Part I, Question 3, etc. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing
the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some
Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of
modern scientific laws and empirical methods. The medieval English poet Chaucer describes his
student as being happy by having
at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of aristotle and his philosophie,[88]
The Italian poet Dante says of Aristotle in the first circles of hell,
I saw the Master there of those who know,
Amid the philosophic family,
By all admired, and by all reverenced;
There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,
Who stood beside him closer than the rest.[89]

Post-Enlightenment thinkers
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has been said to have taken nearly all of his
political philosophy from Aristotle.[90] However implausible this is, it is certainly the case that
Aristotle's rigid separation of action from production, and his justification of the subservience of
slaves and others to the virtue or arete of a few justified the ideal of aristocracy. It is Martin
Heidegger, not Nietzsche, who elaborated a new interpretation of Aristotle, intended to warrant
his deconstruction of scholastic and philosophical tradition. Ayn Rand accredited Aristotle as
"the greatest philosopher in history" and cited him as a major influence on her thinking. More
recently, Alasdair MacIntyre has attempted to reform what he calls the Aristotelian tradition in a
way that is anti-elitist and capable of disputing the claims of both liberals and Nietzscheans.[91]

List of works
Main article: Corpus Aristotelicum
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript
transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost
works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is
made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition

(Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica, Berlin, 18311870), which in turn is based
on ancient classifications of these works.

Honours
Aristotle Mountains on Oscar II Coast in Graham Land, Antarctica are named after Aristotle who
was the first to conjecture the existence of a landmass in the southern high-latitude region,
calling it Antarctica.[92]

Aristotle, Greek Aristoteles (born 384 bce, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greecedied 322, Chalcis,
Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of
Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the
framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Even
after the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment,
Aristotelian concepts remained embedded in Western thinking.

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Aristotles intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts,
including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of
mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology. He was
the founder of formal logic, devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as
the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and
theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century. But he is, of
course, most outstanding as a philosopher. His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in
metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied, and his work remains a
powerful current in contemporary philosophical debate.
This article deals with Aristotles life and thought. For the later development of Aristotelian
philosophy, see Aristotelianism. For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full context of Western
philosophy, see philosophy, Western.

Life
The Academy
Aristotle was born on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece. His father,
Nicomachus, was the physician of Amyntas III (reigned c. 393c. 370 bce), king of Macedonia
and grandfather of Alexander the Great (reigned 336323 bce). After his fathers death in 367,
Aristotle migrated to Athens, where he joined the Academy of Plato (c. 428c. 348 bce). He
remained there for 20 years as Platos pupil and colleague.
Many of Platos later dialogues date from these decades, and they may reflect Aristotles
contributions to philosophical debate at the Academy. Some of Aristotles writings also belong to
this period, though mostly they survive only in fragments. Like his master, Aristotle wrote
initially in dialogue form, and his early ideas show a strong Platonic influence. His dialogue
Eudemus, for example, reflects the Platonic view of the soul as imprisoned in the body and as

capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind. According to Aristotle, the
dead are more blessed and happier than the living, and to die is to return to ones real home.

People

Topics

Alexander Of Aphrodisias (Greek philosopher)

Ammonius Hermiae (Greek philosopher)

Andronicus Of Rhodes (Greek philosopher)

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (Roman scholar, philosopher, and statesman)

Apellicon Of Teos (Greek librarian)

Benjamin Jowett (English scholar)

Danil Heinsius (Dutch poet)

Dicaearchus (Greek philosopher)

Eubulides Of Miletus (Greek philosopher)

Eudemus Of Rhodes (Greek philosopher)

Francis Of Meyronnes (French philosopher)

Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg (German philosopher)

George Of Trebizond (Byzantine humanist)

Jacques Lefvre dtaples (French humanist and theologian)

Jean Buridan (French philosopher and scientist)

John Of Jandun (French philosopher)

John Philoponus (Greek philosopher)

Jules Barthlemy-Saint-Hilaire (French philosopher, statesman, and

journalist)

Lodovico Castelvetro (Italian critic)

Michael Scot (Scottish scholar)

Nicholas Oresme (French bishop, scholar, and economist)

Olympiodorus The Younger (Greek philosopher)

Robert Grosseteste (English bishop)

Rudolf Christoph Eucken (German philosopher)

Saint Albertus Magnus (German theologian, scientist, and philosopher)

Simplicius Of Cilicia (Greek philosopher)

William of Moerbeke (Belgian archbishop)

Another youthful work, the Protrepticus (Exhortation), has been reconstructed by modern
scholars from quotations in various works from late antiquity. Everyone must do philosophy,
Aristotle claims, because even arguing against the practice of philosophy is itself a form of
philosophizing. The best form of philosophy is the contemplation of the universe of nature; it is
for this purpose that God made human beings and gave them a godlike intellect. All else
strength, beauty, power, and honouris worthless.
It is possible that two of Aristotles surviving works on logic and disputation, the Topics and the
Sophistical Refutations, belong to this early period. The former demonstrates how to construct
arguments for a position one has already decided to adopt; the latter shows how to detect
weaknesses in the arguments of others. Although neither work amounts to a systematic treatise
on formal logic, Aristotle can justly say, at the end of the Sophistical Refutations, that he has
invented the discipline of logicnothing at all existed when he started.
During Aristotles residence at the Academy, King Philip II of Macedonia (reigned 359336 bce)
waged war on a number of Greek city-states. The Athenians defended their independence only
half-heartedly, and, after a series of humiliating concessions, they allowed Philip to become, by
338, master of the Greek world. It cannot have been an easy time to be a Macedonian resident in
Athens.
Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial. Aristotle always
acknowledged a great debt to Plato; he took a large part of his philosophical agenda from Plato,
and his teaching is more often a modification than a repudiation of Platos doctrines. Already,
however, Aristotle was beginning to distance himself from Platos theory of Forms, or Ideas
(eidos; see form). (The word Form, when used to refer to Forms as Plato conceived them, is
often capitalized in the scholarly literature; when used to refer to forms as Aristotle conceived
them, it is conventionally lowercased.) Plato had held that, in addition to particular things, there
exists a suprasensible realm of Forms, which are immutable and everlasting. This realm, he
maintained, makes particular things intelligible by accounting for their common natures: a thing
is a horse, for example, by virtue of the fact that it shares in, or imitates, the Form of Horse. In

a lost work, On Ideas, Aristotle maintains that the arguments of Platos central dialogues
establish only that there are, in addition to particulars, certain common objects of the sciences. In
his surviving works as well, Aristotle often takes issue with the theory of Forms, sometimes
politely and sometimes contemptuously. In his Metaphysics he argues that the theory fails to
solve the problems it was meant to address. It does not confer intelligibility on particulars,
because immutable and everlasting Forms cannot explain how particulars come into existence
and undergo change. All the theory does, according to Aristotle, is introduce new entities equal in
number to the entities to be explainedas if one could solve a problem by doubling it. (See
below Form.)

Travels
Table of Contents

Introduction

Life

Writings

Doctrines

Legacy

Major Works

Related

Contributors & Bibliography

When Plato died about 348, his nephew Speusippus became head of the Academy, and Aristotle
left Athens. He migrated to Assus, a city on the northwestern coast of Anatolia (in present-day
Turkey), where Hermias, a graduate of the Academy, was ruler. Aristotle became a close friend
of Hermias and eventually married his ward Pythias. Aristotle helped Hermias to negotiate an
alliance with Macedonia, which angered the Persian king, who had Hermias treacherously
arrested and put to death about 341. Aristotle saluted Hermiass memory in Ode to Virtue, his
only surviving poem.

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While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the
island of Lesbos, Aristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and

marine biology. This work was summarized in a book later known, misleadingly, as The History
of Animals, to which Aristotle added two short treatises, On the Parts of Animals and On the
Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology,
his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. Heor
one of his research assistantsmust have been gifted with remarkably acute eyesight, since
some of the features of insects that he accurately reports were not again observed until the
invention of the microscope in the 17th century.
The scope of Aristotles scientific research is astonishing. Much of it is concerned with the
classification of animals into genus and species; more than 500 species figure in his treatises,
many of them described in detail. The myriad items of information about the anatomy, diet,
habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects
are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition. In some cases his unlikely
stories about rare species of fish were proved accurate many centuries later. In other places he
states clearly and fairly a biological problem that took millennia to solve, such as the nature of
embryonic development.
Despite an admixture of the fabulous, Aristotles biological works must be regarded as a
stupendous achievement. His inquiries were conducted in a genuinely scientific spirit, and he
was always ready to confess ignorance where evidence was insufficient. Whenever there is a
conflict between theory and observation, one must trust observation, he insisted, and theories are
to be trusted only if their results conform with the observed phenomena.
In 343 or 342 Aristotle was summoned by Philip II to the Macedonian capital at Pella to act as
tutor to Philips 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great. Little is known of the content of
Aristotles instruction; although the Rhetoric to Alexander was included in the Aristotelian
corpus for centuries, it is now commonly regarded as a forgery. By 326 Alexander had made
himself master of an empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and included Libya and
Egypt. Ancient sources report that during his campaigns Alexander arranged for biological
specimens to be sent to his tutor from all parts of Greece and Asia Minor.

The Lyceum
Table of Contents

Introduction

Life

Writings

Doctrines

Legacy

Major Works

Related

Contributors & Bibliography

While Alexander was conquering Asia, Aristotle, now 50 years old, was in Athens. Just outside
the city boundary, he established his own school in a gymnasium known as the Lyceum. He built
a substantial library and gathered around him a group of brilliant research students, called
peripatetics from the name of the cloister (peripatos) in which they walked and held their
discussions. The Lyceum was not a private club like the Academy; many of the lectures there
were open to the general public and given free of charge.

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Most of Aristotles surviving works, with the exception of the zoological treatises, probably
belong to this second Athenian sojourn. There is no certainty about their chronological order, and
indeed it is probable that the main treatiseson physics, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, and
politicswere constantly rewritten and updated. Every proposition of Aristotle is fertile of ideas
and full of energy, though his prose is commonly neither lucid nor elegant.
Aristotles works, though not as polished as Platos, are systematic in a way that Platos never
were. Platos dialogues shift constantly from one topic to another, always (from a modern
perspective) crossing the boundaries between different philosophical or scientific disciplines.
Indeed, there was no such thing as an intellectual discipline until Aristotle invented the notion
during his Lyceum period.
Aristotle divided the sciences into three kinds: productive, practical, and theoretical. The
productive sciences, naturally enough, are those that have a product. They include not only
engineering and architecture, which have products like bridges and houses, but also disciplines
such as strategy and rhetoric, where the product is something less concrete, such as victory on
the battlefield or in the courts. The practical sciences, most notably ethics and politics, are those
that guide behaviour. The theoretical sciencesphysics, mathematics, and theologyare those
that have no product and no practical goal but in which information and understanding are
sought for their own sake.
During Aristotles years at the Lyceum, his relationship with his former pupil Alexander
apparently cooled. Alexander became more and more megalomaniac, finally proclaiming himself
divine and demanding that Greeks prostrate themselves before him in adoration. Opposition to
this demand was led by Aristotles nephew Callisthenes (c. 360327 bce), who had been
appointed historian of Alexanders Asiatic expedition on Aristotles recommendation. For his
heroism Callisthenes was falsely implicated in a plot and executed.

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When Alexander died in 323, democratic Athens became uncomfortable for Macedonians, even
those who were anti-imperialist. Saying that he did not wish the city that had executed Socrates
to sin twice against philosophy, Aristotle fled to Chalcis, where he died the following year. His
will, which survives, makes thoughtful provision for a large number of friends and dependents.
To Theophrastus (c. 372c. 287 bce), his successor as head of the Lyceum, he left his library,
including his own writings, which were vast. Aristotles surviving works amount to about one
million words, though they probably represent only about one-fifth of his total output.

Writings
Aristotles writings fall into two groups: those that were published by him but are now almost
entirely lost, and those that were not intended for publication but were collected and preserved
by others. The first group consists mainly of popular works; the second group comprises treatises
that Aristotle used in his teaching.

Lost works
The lost works include poetry, letters, and essays as well as dialogues in the Platonic manner. To
judge by surviving fragments, their content often differed widely from the doctrines of the
surviving treatises. The commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (born c. 200) suggested that
Aristotles works may express two truths: an exoteric truth for public consumption and an
esoteric truth reserved for students in the Lyceum. Most contemporary scholars, however,
believe that the popular writings reflect not Aristotles public views but rather an early stage of
his intellectual development.

Extant works
The works that have been preserved derive from manuscripts left by Aristotle on his death.
According to ancient traditionpassed on by Plutarch (ad 46c. 119) and Strabo (c. 64 bcad

23?)the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus were bequeathed to Neleus of Scepsis, whose
heirs hid them in a cellar to prevent their being confiscated for the library of the kings of
Pergamum (in present-day Turkey). Later, according to this tradition, the books were purchased
by a collector and taken to Athens, where they were commandeered by the Roman commander
Sulla when he conquered the city in 86 bc. Taken to Rome, they were edited and published there
about 60 bc by Andronicus of Rhodes, the last head of the Lyceum. Although many elements of
this story are implausible, it is still widely accepted that Andronicus edited Aristotles texts and
published them with the titles and in the form and order that are familiar today.

Doctrines
Logic
Syllogistic
Aristotles claim to be the founder of logic rests primarily on the Categories, the De
interpretatione, and the Prior Analytics, which deal respectively with words, propositions, and
syllogisms. These works, along with the Topics, the Sophistical Refutations, and a treatise on
scientific method, the Posterior Analytics, were grouped together in a collection known as the
Organon, or tool of thought.
The Prior Analytics is devoted to the theory of the syllogism, a central method of inference that
can be illustrated by familiar examples such as the following:
Every Greek is human. Every human is mortal. Therefore, every Greek is mortal.
Aristotle discusses the various forms that syllogisms can take and identifies which forms
constitute reliable inferences. The example above contains three propositions in the indicative
mood, which Aristotle calls propositions. (Roughly speaking, a proposition is a proposition
considered solely with respect to its logical features.) The third proposition, the one beginning
with therefore, Aristotle calls the conclusion of the syllogism. The other two propositions may
be called premises, though Aristotle does not consistently use any particular technical term to
distinguish them.
The propositions in the example above begin with the word every; Aristotle calls such
propositions universal. (In English, universal propositions can be expressed by using all rather
than every; thus, Every Greek is human is equivalent to All Greeks are human.) Universal
propositions may be affirmative, as in this example, or negative, as in No Greek is a horse.
Universal propositions differ from particular propositions, such as Some Greek is bearded (a
particular affirmative) and Some Greek is not bearded (a particular negative). In the Middle Ages
it became customary to call the difference between universal and particular propositions a
difference of quantity and the difference between affirmative and negative propositions a
difference of quality.
In propositions of all these kinds, Aristotle says, something is predicated of something else. The
items that enter into predications Aristotle calls terms. It is a feature of terms, as conceived by

Aristotle, that they can figure either as predicates or as subjects of predication. This means that
they can play three distinct roles in a syllogism. The term that is the predicate of the conclusion
is the major term; the term of which the major term is predicated in the conclusion is the
minor term; and the term that appears in each of the premises is the middle term.
In addition to inventing this technical vocabulary, Aristotle introduced the practice of using
schematic letters to identify particular patterns of argument, a device that is essential for the
systematic study of inference and that is ubiquitous in modern mathematical logic. Thus, the
pattern of argument exhibited in the example above can be represented in the schematic
proposition:
If A belongs to every B, and B belongs to every C, A belongs to every C.
Because propositions may differ in quantity and quality, and because the middle term may
occupy several different places in the premises, many different patterns of syllogistic inference
are possible. Additional examples are the following:
Every Greek is human. No human is immortal. Therefore, no Greek is immortal.
Some animal is a dog. Some dog is white. Therefore, every animal is white.
From late antiquity, triads of these different kinds were called moods of the syllogism. The two
moods illustrated above exhibit an important difference: the first is a valid argument, and the
second is an invalid argument, having true premises and a false conclusion. An argument is valid
only if its form is such that it will never lead from true premises to a false conclusion. Aristotle
sought to determine which forms result in valid inferences. He set out a number of rules giving
necessary conditions for the validity of a syllogism, such as the following:
At least one premise must be universal.
At least one premise must be affirmative.
If either premise is negative, the conclusion must be negative.
Aristotles syllogistic is a remarkable achievement: it is a systematic formulation of an important
part of logic. From roughly the Renaissance until the early 19th century, it was widely believed
that syllogistic was the whole of logic. But in fact it is only a fragment. It does not deal, for
example, with inferences that depend on words such as and, or, and ifthen, which, instead of
attaching to nouns, link whole propositions together.

Stoicism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Zeno of Citium

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early
3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment,
and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.
[1]

Stoics were concerned with the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human
freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord
with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they
thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how
he behaved.[2]
Later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for
happiness", a sage was immune to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase
"stoic calm", though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a
sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.[1]

From its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular with a following in Greece and throughout the
Roman Empire including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius until the closing of all philosophy
schools in AD 529 by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived their pagan character as
being at odds with the Christian faith.[3][4]
Contents

1 Basic tenets

2 History

3 Stoic logic
o

3.1 Propositional logic

3.2 Stoic categories

3.3 Epistemology

4 Stoic physics and cosmology

5 Stoic ethics and virtues

o

5.1 The doctrine of "things indifferent"

5.2 Spiritual exercise

6 Social philosophy

7 Stoicism and Christianity

8 Modern usage

9 Stoic quotations

10 Stoic philosophers

11 See also

12 References

13 Further reading
o

13.1 Primary sources

13.2 Studies

14 External links

Basic tenets

Philosophy does
not promise to
secure anything
external for man,
otherwise it
would be
admitting
something that
lies beyond its
proper subjectmatter. For as
the material of
the carpenter is
wood, and that of
statuary bronze,
so the subjectmatter of the art
of living is each
person's own life.

Epictetus[5]

The Stoics provided a unified account of the world, consisting of formal logic, non-dualistic
physics and naturalistic ethics. Of these, they emphasized ethics as the main focus of human
knowledge, though their logical theories were of more interest for later philosophers.
Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming
destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows
one to understand the universal reason (logos). A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving
the individual's ethical and moral well-being: "Virtue consists in a will that is in agreement with
Nature."[6] This principle also applies to the realm of interpersonal relationships; "to be free from
anger, envy, and jealousy,"[7] and to accept even slaves as "equals of other men, because all men
alike are products of nature."[8]
The Stoic ethic espouses a deterministic perspective; in regard to those who lack Stoic virtue,
Cleanthes once opined that the wicked man is "like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go
wherever it goes."[6] A Stoic of virtue, by contrast, would amend his will to suit the world and
remain, in the words of Epictetus, "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet
happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy,"[7] thus positing a "completely autonomous"

individual will, and at the same time a universe that is "a rigidly deterministic single whole."
This viewpoint was later described as "Classical Pantheism" (and was adopted by Dutch
philosopher Baruch Spinoza).[9]
Stoicism became the foremost popular philosophy among the educated elite in the Hellenistic
world and the Roman Empire,[10] to the point where, in the words of Gilbert Murray "nearly all
the successors of Alexander [...] professed themselves Stoics."[11]
History

Antisthenes, founder of the Cynic school of philosophy

Beginning at around 301 BC, Zeno taught philosophy at the Stoa Poikile (i.e., "the painted
porch"), from which his philosophy got its name.[12] Unlike the other schools of philosophy, such
as the Epicureans, Zeno chose to teach his philosophy in a public space, which was a colonnade
overlooking the central gathering place of Athens, the Agora.
Zeno's ideas developed from those of the Cynics, whose founding father, Antisthenes, had been a
disciple of Socrates. Zeno's most influential follower was Chrysippus, who was responsible for
the molding of what is now called Stoicism. Later Roman Stoics focused on promoting a life in
harmony within the universe, over which one has no direct control.
Scholars usually divide the history of Stoicism into three phases:

Early Stoa, from the founding of the school by Zeno to Antipater.

Middle Stoa, including Panaetius and Posidonius.

Late Stoa, including Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.

As A. A. Long states, no complete work by any Stoic philosopher survives from the first two
phases of Stoicism. Only Roman texts from the Late Stoa survive.[13]
Stoic logic
Propositional logic

Diodorus Cronus, who was one of Zeno's teachers, is considered the philosopher who first
introduced and developed an approach to logic now known as propositional logic. This is an
approach to logic based on statements or propositions, rather than terms, making it very different
from Aristotle's term logic. Later, Chrysippus developed this approach to logic into a system that
became known as Stoic logic and included a deductive system (Stoic Syllogistic) which was
considered a rival to Aristotle's Syllogistic. New interest in Stoic logic came in the 20th century,
when important developments in logic were based on propositional logic. Susanne Bobzien
wrote, "The many close similarities between Chrysippus' philosophical logic and that of Gottlob
Frege are especially striking."[14]
Bobzien also notes that "Chrysippus wrote over 300 books on logic, on virtually any topic logic
today concerns itself with, including speech act theory, sentence analysis, singular and plural
expressions, types of predicates, indexicals, existential propositions, sentential connectives,
negations, disjunctions, conditionals, logical consequence, valid argument forms, theory of
deduction, propositional logic, modal logic, tense logic, epistemic logic, logic of suppositions,
logic of imperatives, ambiguity and logical paradoxes."[15]
Stoic categories

Main article: Stoic categories

The Stoics held that all being () -- though not all things () -- is corporeal. They accepted
the distinction between concrete bodies and abstract ones, but rejected Aristotle's belief that
purely incorporeal being exists. Thus, they accepted Anaxagoras' idea (as did Aristotle) that if an
object is hot, it is because some part of a universal heat body had entered the object. But, unlike
Aristotle, they extended the idea to cover all accidents. Thus if an object is red, it would be
because some part of a universal red body had entered the object.
They held that there were four categories.
substance ()
The primary matter, formless substance, (ousia) that things are made of
quality ()
The way matter is organized to form an individual object; in Stoic physics, a
physical ingredient (pneuma: air or breath), which informs the matter
somehow disposed ( )
Particular characteristics, not present within the object, such as size, shape,
action, and posture
Somehow disposed in relation to something ( )
Characteristics related to other phenomena, such as the position of an object
within time and space relative to other objects
Epistemology

The Stoics propounded that knowledge can be attained through the use of reason. Truth can be
distinguished from fallacy; even if, in practice, only an approximation can be made. According to
the Stoics, the senses constantly receive sensations: pulsations that pass from objects through the
senses to the mind, where they leave an impression in the imagination (phantasia). (An
impression arising from the mind was called a phantasma.)[16]
The mind has the ability to judge (, synkatathesis)approve or rejectan
impression, enabling it to distinguish a true representation of reality from one that is false. Some
impressions can be assented to immediately, but others can only achieve varying degrees of
hesitant approval, which can be labeled belief or opinion (doxa). It is only through reason that we
achieve clear comprehension and conviction (katalepsis). Certain and true knowledge (episteme),
achievable by the Stoic sage, can be attained only by verifying the conviction with the expertise
of one's peers and the collective judgment of humankind.

Make for yourself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to you, so as to see
distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell
yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into
which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to
examine methodically and truly every object that is presented to you in life, and always to look at
things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything
performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iii. 11.
Stoic physics and cosmology
Main article: Stoic physics

According to the Stoics, the universe is a material, reasoning substance, known as God or
Nature, which the Stoics divided into two classes, the active and the passive. The passive
substance is matter, which "lies sluggish, a substance ready for any use, but sure to remain
unemployed if no one sets it in motion."[17] The active substance, which can be called Fate, or
Universal Reason (Logos), is an intelligent aether or primordial fire, which acts on the passive
matter:
The universe itself is god and the universal outpouring of its soul; it is this same world's guiding
principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the
totality that embraces all existence; then the foreordained might and necessity of the future; then
fire and the principle of aether; then those elements whose natural state is one of flux and
transition, such as water, earth, and air; then the sun, the moon, the stars; and the universal
existence in which all things are contained.
Chrysippus, in Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i.
Everything is subject to the laws of Fate, for the Universe acts only according to its own nature,
and the nature of the passive matter it governs. The souls of people and animals are emanations
from this primordial fire, and are, likewise, subject to Fate:
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and
observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being;
and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all
things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iv. 40.

Individual souls are perishable by nature, and can be "transmuted and diffused, assuming a fiery
nature by being received into the Seminal Reason (logos spermatikos) of the Universe."[18] Since
right Reason is the foundation of both humanity and the universe, it follows that the goal of life
is to live according to Reason, that is, to live a life according to Nature.
Stoic ethics and virtues

The ancient Stoics are often misunderstood because the terms they used pertained to different
concepts in the past than they do today. The word 'stoic' has come to mean 'unemotional' or
indifferent to pain, because Stoic ethics taught freedom from 'passion' by following 'reason.' The
Stoics did not seek to extinguish emotions; rather, they sought to transform them by a resolute
'asksis' that enables a person to develop clear judgment and inner calm.[19] Logic, reflection, and
concentration were the methods of such self-discipline.
Borrowing from the Cynics, the foundation of Stoic ethics is that good lies in the state of the soul
itself; in wisdom and self-control. Stoic ethics stressed the rule: "Follow where reason leads."
One must therefore strive to be free of the passions, bearing in mind that the ancient meaning of
'passion' was "anguish" or "suffering",[20] that is, "passively" reacting to external events
somewhat different from the modern use of the word. A distinction was made between pathos
(plural pathe) which is normally translated as passion, propathos or instinctive reaction (e.g.,
turning pale and trembling when confronted by physical danger) and eupathos, which is the mark
of the Stoic sage (sophos). The eupatheia are feelings that result from correct judgment in the
same way as passions result from incorrect judgment.
The idea was to be free of suffering through apatheia (Greek: ) or peace of mind
(literally, 'without passion'),[21] where peace of mind was understood in the ancient sensebeing
objective or having "clear judgment" and the maintenance of equanimity in the face of life's
highs and lows.
For the Stoics, 'reason' meant not only using logic, but also understanding the processes of nature
the logos, or universal reason, inherent in all things. Living according to reason and virtue,
they held, is to live in harmony with the divine order of the universe, in recognition of the
common reason and essential value of all people. The four cardinal virtues of the Stoic
philosophy are wisdom (Sophia), courage (Andreia), justice (Dikaiosyne), and temperance
(Sophrosyne), a classification derived from the teachings of Plato.
Following Socrates, the Stoics held that unhappiness and evil are the results of human ignorance
of the reason in nature. If someone is unkind, it is because they are unaware of their own
universal reason, which leads to the conclusion of kindness. The solution to evil and unhappiness
then, is the practice of Stoic philosophyto examine one's own judgments and behavior and
determine where they diverge from the universal reason of nature.

The Stoics accepted that suicide was permissible for the wise person in circumstances that might
prevent them from living a virtuous life.[22] Plutarch held that accepting life under tyranny would
have compromised Cato's self-consistency (constantia) as a Stoic and impaired his freedom to
make the honorable moral choices.[23] Suicide could be justified if one fell victim to severe pain
or disease,[22] but otherwise suicide would usually be seen as a rejection of one's social duty.[24]
The doctrine of "things indifferent"

In philosophical terms, things that are indifferent are outside the application of moral law, that is
without tendency to either promote or obstruct moral ends. Actions neither required nor
forbidden by the moral law, or that do not affect morality, are called morally indifferent. The
doctrine of things indifferent (, adiaphora) arose in the Stoic school as a corollary of
its diametric opposition of virtue and vice ( kathekon and hamartemata,
respectively "convenient actions," or actions in accordance with nature, and mistakes). As a
result of this dichotomy, a large class of objects were left unassigned and thus regarded as
indifferent.
Eventually three sub-classes of "things indifferent" developed: things to prefer because they
assist life according to nature; things to avoid because they hinder it; and things indifferent in the
narrower sense.
The principle of adiaphora was also common to the Cynics and Sceptics. The conception of
things indifferent is, according to Kant, extra-moral[citation needed]. The doctrine of things indifferent
was revived during the Renaissance by Philip Melanchthon.
Spiritual exercise

Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor

Philosophy for a Stoic is not just a set of beliefs or ethical claims, it is a way of life involving
constant practice and training (or askesis, see asceticism). Stoic philosophical and spiritual
practices included logic, Socratic dialog and self-dialog, contemplation of death, training
attention to remain in the present moment (similar to some forms of Eastern meditation), and
daily reflection on everyday problems and possible solutions. Philosophy for a Stoic is an active
process of constant practice and self-reminder.
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius defines several such practices. For example, in Book II, part
1:
Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious,
uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and
ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be
angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together...
Prior to Aurelius, Epictetus in his Discourses distinguished between three topoi: judgment,
desire, and inclination.[25] According to French philosopher Pierre Hadot, Epictetus identifies
these three acts with logic, physics, and ethics respectively.[26] Hadot writes that in the
Meditations "Each maxim develops either one of these very characteristic topoi, or two of them
or three of them."[27]
The practices of spiritual exercises have been described as influencing those of reflective
practice by Seamus Mac Suibhne .[28] Parallels between Stoic spiritual exercises and modern
cognitive-behavioral therapy have been detailed at length in Robertson's The Philosophy of
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.[29]
Social philosophy

A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism: All people are manifestations of the one
universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one
another. In the Discourses, Epictetus comments on man's relationship with the world: "Each
human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth; but he is also a member of the
great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy."[30] This sentiment echoes
that of Diogenes of Sinope, who said "I am not an Athenian or a Corinthian, but a citizen of the
world."[31]
They held that external differences such as rank and wealth are of no importance in social
relationships. Instead they advocated the brotherhood of humanity and the natural equality of all
human beings. Stoicism became the most influential school of the GrecoRoman world, and

produced a number of remarkable writers and personalities, such as Cato the Younger and
Epictetus.
In particular, they were noted for their urging of clemency toward slaves. Seneca exhorted,
"Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon
by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies."[32]
Stoicism and Christianity
See also: Neostoicism

The major difference between the two philosophies is Stoicism's pantheism, in which God is
never fully transcendent but always immanent. God as the world-creating entity is personalized
in Christian thought, but Stoicism equates God with the totality of the universe, which was
deeply contrary to Christianity. Stoicism, unlike Christianity, does not posit a beginning or end to
the universe, nor does it assert that the individual continues to exist beyond death.[33]
Stoicism was later regarded by the Fathers of the Church as a 'pagan philosophy';[3][4]
nonetheless, some of the central philosophical concepts of Stoicism were employed by the early
Christian writers. Examples include the terms "logos", "virtue", "Spirit", and "conscience".[33] But
the parallels go well beyond the sharing and borrowing of terminology. Both Stoicism and
Christianity assert an inner freedom in the face of the external world, a belief in human kinship
with Nature or God, a sense of the innate depravityor "persistent evil"of humankind,[33] and
the futility and temporarity of worldly possessions and attachments. Both encourage Ascesis with
respect to the passions and inferior emotions such as lust, envy and anger, so that the higher
possibilities of one's humanity can be awakened and developed.
Stoic writings such as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius have been highly regarded by many
Christians throughout the centuries. The Stoic ideal of dispassion is accepted to this day as the
perfect moral state by the Eastern Orthodox Church. Saint Ambrose of Milan was known for
applying Stoic philosophy to his theology.
Modern usage

The word "stoic" commonly refers to someone indifferent to pain, pleasure, grief, or joy. The
modern usage as "person who represses feelings or endures patiently" was first cited in 1579 as a
noun, and 1596 as an adjective.[34] In contrast to the term "Epicurean", the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy's entry on Stoicism notes, "the sense of the English adjective 'stoical' is not utterly
misleading with regard to its philosophical origins."[35]
Stoic quotations

Below are some quotations from major Stoic philosophers, selected to illustrate common Stoic
beliefs:
Epictetus:

"Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal
of desire." (iv.1.175)

"Where is the good? In the will. Where is the evil? In the will. Where is neither
of them? In those things that are independent of the will." (ii.16.1)

"Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them." (Ench. 5)

"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by

reason of himself alone." (iii.24.2)

"I am formed by nature for my own good: I am not formed for my own evil."
(iii.24.83)

"Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not your own; nothing to grow to you
that may give you agony when it is torn away." (iv.1.112)

Marcus Aurelius:

"Get rid of the judgment, get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt
itself." (viii.40)

"Everything is right for me that is right for you, O Universe. Nothing for me is
too early or too late that comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me
that your seasons bring, O Nature. From you are all things, in you are all
things, to you all things return." (iv.23)

"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously,
vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping
your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you
hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live now according to nature,
speaking heroic truth in every word that you utter, you will live happy. And
there is no man able to prevent this." (iii.12)

"How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything that happens in

life!" (xii.13)

"Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they
admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul; but the soul turns
and moves itself alone." (v 19)

"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is
beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province
of man, believe that it is within your own compass also" (vi.19)

"Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all
forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of
those applauding hands." (iv.3)

Seneca the Younger:

"The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live." (Ep. 101.15)

"That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away." (Ep. 59.18)

"Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be
cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of
our own that perishes." (De Provid. v.8)

"Virtue is nothing else than right reason." (Ep. 66.32)

Stoic philosophers
Main article: List of Stoic philosophers

Zeno of Citium (332262 BC), founder of Stoicism and the Stoic Academy (Stoa) in
Athens

Aristo of Chios, pupil of Zeno;

Herillus of Carthage

Cleanthes (of Assos) (330232 BC), second head of Stoic Academy

Chrysippus (280204 BC), third head of the academy

Diogenes of Babylon (230150 BC)

Antipater of Tarsus (210129 BC)

Panaetius of Rhodes (185109 BC)

Posidonius of Apameia (c. 135 BC 51 BC)

Diodotus (c. 120 BC 59 BC), teacher of Cicero

Cato the Younger (9446 BC)

Seneca (4 BC AD 65)

Gaius Musonius Rufus

Rubellius Plautus

Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetu

Epictetus (AD 55135 )

Hierocles (2nd century AD)

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121180 )

Epicureanism
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Epicurus

Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around
307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His
materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following
Aristippusabout whom very little is knownEpicurus believed that what he called "pleasure"
is the greatest good, but the way to attain such pleasure is to live modestly and to gain
knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires. This led one to attain a
state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia).
The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form.
Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure to be the sole
intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a
simple life make it different from "hedonism" as it is commonly understood.
Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, though later it became the main opponent
of Stoicism. Epicurus and his followers shunned politics. After the death of Epicurus, his school
was headed by Hermarchus; later many Epicurean societies flourished in the Late Hellenistic era
and during the Roman era (such as those in Antiochia, Alexandria, Rhodes, and Ercolano). Its
best-known Roman proponent was the poet Lucretius. By the end of the Roman Empire, being
opposed by philosophies (mainly Neo-Platonism) that were now in the ascendance,

Epicureanism had all but died out, and would be resurrected in the 17th century by the atomist
Pierre Gassendi, who adapted it to the Christian doctrine.
Some writings by Epicurus have survived. Some scholars consider the epic poem On the Nature
of Things by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of
Epicureanism. Many of the papyrus scrolls unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum
are Epicurean texts. At least some are thought to have belonged to the Epicurean Philodemus.
Contents

1 History

2 Religion

3 Philosophy

4 Ethics

5 Epicurean physics

6 Epistemology

7 Tetrapharmakos

8 Notable Epicureans

9 Modern usage and misconceptions

10 See also

11 Notes

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External links

History

The school of Epicurus, called "The Garden," was based in Epicurus' home and garden. It had a
small but devoted following in his lifetime. Its members included Hermarchus, Idomeneus,
Colotes, Polyaenus, and Metrodorus. Epicurus emphasized friendship as an important ingredient
of happiness, and the school seems to have been a moderately ascetic community which rejected

the political limelight of Athenian philosophy. They were fairly cosmopolitan by Athenian
standards, including women and slaves, and were probably vegetarians (Stevenson 2005).
The school's popularity grew and it became, along with Stoicism and Skepticism, one of the
three dominant schools of Hellenistic Philosophy, lasting strongly through the later Roman
Empire.[1] Another major source of information is the Roman politician and philosopher Cicero,
although he was highly critical, denouncing the Epicureans as unbridled hedonists, devoid of a
sense of virtue and duty, and guilty of withdrawing from public life. Another ancient source is
Diogenes of Oenoanda, who composed a large inscription at Oenoanda in Lycia.
A library in the Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, was perhaps owned by Julius Caesar's
father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. The scrolls which the library consisted of
were preserved albeit in carbonized form by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Several of these
Herculaneum papyri which are unrolled and deciphered were found to contain a large number of
works by Philodemus, a late Hellenistic Epicurean, and Epicurus himself, attesting to the
school's enduring popularity. The task of unrolling and deciphering the over 1800 charred
papyrus scrolls continues today.
With the dominance of the Neo-Platonism and Peripatetic philosophy (and later Christianity)
Epicureanism' declined until by the late third century A.D. there was very little trace of its
existence.[2]
The early Christian writer Lactantius criticizes Epicurus at several points throughout his Divine
Institutes. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the Epicureans are depicted as heretics suffering in the
sixth circle of hell. In fact, Epicurus appears to represent the ultimate heresy. The word for a
heretic in the Talmudic literature is "Apiqoros" (), and Epicurus is titled in Modern Greek
idiom as the "Dark Philosopher".
By the 16th century, the works of Diogenes Laertius were being printed in Europe. In the 17th
century the French Franciscan priest, scientist and philosopher Pierre Gassendi wrote two books
forcefully reviving Epicureanism. Shortly thereafter, and clearly influenced by Gassendi, Walter
Charleton published several works on Epicureanism in English. Attacks by Christians continued,
most forcefully by the Cambridge Platonists.
In the Modern Age, scientists adopted atomist theories, while materialist philosophers embraced
Epicurus' hedonist ethics and restated his objections to natural teleology.
Religion

Epicureanism emphasizes the neutrality of the gods, that they do not interfere with human lives.
It states that gods, matter, and souls are all made up of atoms. Souls are made from atoms, and
gods possess souls, but their souls adhere to their bodies without escaping. Humans have the

same kind of souls, but the forces binding human atoms together do not hold the soul forever.
The Epicureans also used the atomist theories of Democritus and Leucippus to assert that man
has free will. They held that all thoughts are merely atoms swerving randomly. This explanation
served to satisfy people who wondered anxiously about their role in the universe.
The Riddle of Epicurus, or Problem of evil, is a famous argument against the existence of an allpowerful and providential God or gods. As recorded by Lactantius:
God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to,
or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot,
then he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to,
then he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to
nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can,
which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or
why does he not eliminate them?
[3]

This type of trilemma argument (God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists) was one
favoured by the ancient Greek skeptics, and this argument may have been wrongly attributed to
Epicurus by Lactantius, who, from his Christian perspective, regarded Epicurus as an atheist.[4]
According to Reinhold F. Glei, it is settled that the argument of theodicy is from an academical
source which is not only not Epicurean, but even anti-Epicurean.[5] The earliest extant version of
this trilemma appears in the writings of the skeptic Sextus Empiricus.[6]
Epicurus' view was that there were gods, but that they were neither willing nor able to prevent
evil. This was not because they were malevolent, but because they lived in a perfect state of
ataraxia, a state everyone should strive to emulate; it is not the gods who are upset by evils, but
people.[4] Epicurus conceived the gods as blissful and immortal yet material beings made of
atoms inhabiting the metakosmia: empty spaces between worlds in the vastness of infinite space.
In spite of his recognition of the gods, the practical effect of this materialistic explanation of the
gods' existence and their complete non-intervention in human affairs renders his philosophy akin
in divine effects to the attitude of Deism.
In Dante's Divine Comedy, the flaming tombs of the Epicureans are located within the sixth
circle of hell (Inferno, Canto X). They are the first heretics seen and appear to represent the
ultimate, if not quintessential, heresy.[7] Similarly, according to Jewish Mishnah, Epicureans
(apiqorsim, people who share the beliefs of the movement) are among the people who do not
have a share of the "World-to-Come" (afterlife or the world of the Messianic era).

Parallels may be drawn to Buddhism, which similarly emphasizes a lack of divine interference
and aspects of its atomism. Buddhism also resembles Epicureanism in its temperateness,
including the belief that great excess leads to great dissatisfaction.
Philosophy
Part of a series on
Hedonism
Thinkers[show]
Schools of hedonism[show]
Key concepts[show]

The philosophy originated by Epicurus flourished for seven centuries. It propounded an ethic of
individual pleasure as the sole or chief good in life. Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a
way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one's lifetime, yet doing so
moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure. The
emphasis was placed on pleasures of the mind rather than on physical pleasures. Therefore,
according to Epicurus, with whom a person eats is of greater importance than what is eaten.
Unnecessary and, especially, artificially produced desires were to be suppressed. Since learning,
culture, and civilization as well as social and political involvements could give rise to desires that
are difficult to satisfy and thus result in disturbing one's peace of mind, they were discouraged.
Knowledge was sought only to rid oneself of religious fears and superstitions, the two primary
fears to be eliminated being fear of the gods and of death. Viewing marriage and what attends it
as a threat to one's peace of mind, Epicurus lived a celibate life but did not impose this restriction
on his followers.
The philosophy was characterized by an absence of divine principle. Lawbreaking was counseled
against because of both the shame associated with detection and the punishment it might bring.
Living in fear of being found out or punished would take away from pleasure, and this made
even secret wrongdoing inadvisable. To the Epicureans, virtue in itself had no value and was
beneficial only when it served as a means to gain happiness. Reciprocity was recommended, not
because it was divinely ordered or innately noble, but because it was personally beneficial.

Friendships rested on the same mutual basis, that is, the pleasure resulting to the possessors.
Epicurus laid great emphasis on developing friendships as the basis of a satisfying life.
of all the things which wisdom has contrived which contribute to a blessed life, none
is more important, more fruitful, than friendship
quoted by Cicero,

[8]

While the pursuit of pleasure formed the focal point of the philosophy, this was largely directed
to the "static pleasures" of minimizing pain, anxiety and suffering. In fact Epicurus referred to
life as a "bitter gift".
When we say...that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of
the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some
through ignorance, prejudice or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the
absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken
succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of
fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is
sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and
banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the
soul.
[9]

The Epicureans believed in the existence of the gods, but believed that the gods were made of
atoms just like everything else. It was thought that the gods were too far away from the earth to
have any interest in what man was doing; so it did not do any good to pray or to sacrifice to
them. The gods, they believed, did not create the universe, nor did they inflict punishment or
bestow blessings on anyone, but they were supremely happy; this was the goal to strive for
during one's own human life.
"Live unknown was one of [key] maxims. This was completely at odds with all previous ideas of
seeking fame and glory, or even wanting something so apparently decent as honor."[10]
Epicureanism rejects immortality and mysticism; it believes in the soul, but suggests that the soul
is as mortal as the body. Epicurus rejected any possibility of an afterlife, while still contending
that one need not fear death: "Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without
sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."[11] From this doctrine arose the
Epicurean epitaph: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care)
which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of
the Roman Empire. This quote is often used today at humanist funerals.[12]
Ethics

Epicurus was an early thinker to develop the notion of justice as a social contract. He defined
justice as an agreement "neither to harm nor be harmed". The point of living in a society with
laws and punishments is to be protected from harm so that one is free to pursue happiness.
Because of this, laws that do not contribute to promoting human happiness are not just. He gave
his own unique version of the Ethic of Reciprocity, which differs from other formulations by
emphasizing minimizing harm and maximizing happiness for oneself and others:
It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly (agreeing "neither
to harm nor be harmed"[13]),
and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.[14]
Epicureanism incorporated a relatively full account of the social contract theory, following after
a vague description of such a society in Plato's Republic. The social contract theory established
by Epicureanism is based on mutual agreement, not divine decree.
Epicurean physics

Epicurus' philosophy of the physical world is found in his Letter to Herodotus: Diogenes
Laertius 10.34-83.
If a limited form lives within an unlimited void, the form could only wander aimlessly about,
because what is unlimited is ungraspable; meaning, the limited form would travel forever, for it
does not have any obstacles. The void would have to be limited in quality and the form of an
unlimited quality, for an unlimited form can oscillate and seemingly grasppractically, but not
literallyan unlimited number of spots within the limited void. So therefore all living things on
Earth are unlimited, and the Earth on which they live and the universe around it, is limited.
Forms can change, but not their inherent qualities, for change can only affect their shape. Some
things can be changed and some things cannot be changed because forms that are unchangeable
cannot be destroyed if certain attributes can be removed; for attributes not only have the
intention of altering an unchangeable form, but also the inevitable possibility of becomingin
relation to the form's disposition to its present environmentboth an armor and a vulnerability
to its stability.
Further proof that there are unchangeable forms and their inability to be destroyed, is the concept
of the "non-evident." A form cannot come into being from the voidwhich is nothing; it would
be as if all forms come into being spontaneously, needless of reproduction. The implied meaning
of "destroying" something is to undo its existence, to make it not there anymore, and this cannot
be so: if the void is that which does not exist, and if this void is the implied destination of the
destroyed, then the thing in reality cannot be destroyed, for the thing (and all things) could not
have existed in the first place (as Lucretius said, ex nihilo nihil fit: nothing comes from nothing).
This totality of forms is eternal and unchangeable.

Atoms move, in the appropriate way, constantly and for all time. Forms first come to us in
images or "projections"outlines of their true selves. For an image to be perceived by the
human eye, the "atoms" of the image must cross a great distance at enormous speed and must not
encounter any conflicting atoms along the way. The presence of atomic resistance equal atomic
slowness; whereas, if the path is deficient of atomic resistance, the traversal rate is much faster
(and clearer). Because of resistance, forms must be unlimited (unchangeable and able to grasp
any point within the void) because, if they weren't, a form's image would not come from a single
place, but fragmented and from several places. This confirms that a single form cannot be at
multiple places at the same time.
Epicurus for the most part follows Democritean atomism but differs in proclaiming the clinamen
(swerve or declination). Imagining atoms to be moving under an external force, Epicurus
conceives an occasional atom 'swerving' for reasons peculiar to itself i.e. not by external
compulsion but by 'free will'. In this his view absolutely opposes Democritean determinism as
well as developed Stoicism. Otherwise he conceives of atoms as does Democritus - in that they
have position, number and shape. To Democritus' differentiating criteria Epicurus adds 'weight'
but maintains Democritus' view that atoms are necessarily indivisible and hence possess no
demonstrable internal space.
And the senses warrant us other means of perception: hearing and smelling. As in the same way
an image traverses through the air, the atoms of sound and smell traverse the same way. This
perceptive experience is itself the flow of the moving atoms; and like the changeable and
unchangeable forms, the form from which the flow traverses is shed and shattered into even
smaller atoms, atoms of which still represent the original form, but they are slightly disconnected
and of diverse magnitudes. This flow, like that of an echo, reverberates (off one's senses) and
goes back to its start; meaning, one's sensory perception happens in the coming, going, or arch,
of the flow; and when the flow retreats back to its starting position, the atomic image is back
together again: thus when one smells something one has the ability to see it too [because atoms
reach the one who smells or sees from the object.]
And this leads to the question of how atomic speed and motion works. Epicurus says that there
are two kinds of motion: the straight motion and the curved motion, and its motion traverse as
fast as the speed of thought.
Epicurus proposed the idea of 'the space between worlds' (metakosmia) the relatively empty
spaces in the infinite void where worlds had not been formed by the joining together of the atoms
through their endless motion.
Epistemology

Epicurean epistemology has three criteria of truth: sensations (aisthsis), preconceptions

(prolepsis), and feelings (path). Prolepsis is sometimes translated as "basic grasp" but could

also be described as "universal ideas": concepts that are understood by all. An example of
prolepsis is the word "man" because every person has a preconceived notion of what a man is.
Sensations or sense perception is knowledge that is received from the senses alone. Much like
modern science, epicurean philosophy posits that empiricism can be used to sort truth from
falsehood. Feelings are more related to ethics than Epicurean physical theory. Feelings merely
tell the individual what brings about pleasure and what brings about pain. This is important for
the Epicurean because these are the basis for the entire Epicurean ethical doctrine.
According to Epicurus, the basic means for our understanding of things are the 'sensations'
(aestheses), 'concepts' (prolepsis), 'emotions' (pathe) and the 'focusing of thought into an
impression' (phantastikes epiboles tes dianoias).
Epicureans reject dialectic as confusing (parelkousa) because for the physical philosophers it is
sufficient to use the correct words which refer to the concepts of the world. Epicurus then, in his
work On the Canon, says that the criteria of truth are the senses, the preconceptions and the
feelings. Epicureans add to these the focusing of thought into an impression. He himself is
referring to those in his Epitome to Herodotus and in Principal Doctrines.[15]
The senses are the first criterion of truth, since they create the first impressions and testify the
existence of the external world. Sensory input is neither subjective nor deceitful, but the
misunderstanding comes when the mind adds to or subtracts something from these impressions
through our preconceived notions. Therefore, our sensory input alone cannot lead us to
inaccuracy, only the concepts and opinions that come from our interpretations of our sensory
input can. Therefore our sensory data is the only truly accurate thing which we have to rely for
our understanding of the world around us.
And whatever image we receive by direct understanding by our mind or through our
sensory organs of the shape or the essential properties that are the true form of the
solid object, since it is created by the constant repetition of the image or the
impression it has left behind. There is always inaccuracy and error involved in
bringing into a judgment an element that is additional to sensory impressions,
either to confirm [what we sensed] or deny it.
[16]
Epicurus said that all the tangible things are real and each impression comes from
existing objects and is determined by the object that causes the sensations.
[17]
Therefore all the impressions are real, while the preconceived notions are not real
and can be modified.

If you battle with all your sensations, you will be unable to form a standard for
judging which of them are incorrect.
[18]

The concepts are the categories which have formed mentally according to our sensory input, for
example the concepts "man", "warm", and "sweet", etc. These concepts are directly related to
memory and can be recalled at any time, only by the use of the respective word. (Compare the
anthropological SapirWhorf hypothesis). Epicurus also calls them "the meanings that underlie
the words" (hypotetagmena tois phthongois: semantic substance of the words) in his letter to
Herodotus. The feelings or emotions (pathe) are related to the senses and the concepts. They are
the inner impulses that make us feel like or dislike about certain external objects, which we
perceive through the senses, and are associated with the preconceptions that are recalled.
In this moment that the word "man" is spoken, immediately due to the concept [or
category of the idea] an image is projected in the mind which is related to the
sensory input data.
[19]
First of all Herodotus, we must understand the meanings that underlie the words, so
that by referring to them, we may be able to reach judgments about our opinions,
matters of inquiry, or problems and leave everything undecided as we can argue
endlessly or use words that have no clearly defined meaning.
[20]

Apart from these there is the assumption (hypolepsis), which is either the hypothesis or the
opinion about something (matter or action), and which can be correct or incorrect. The
assumptions are created by our sensations, concepts and emotions. Since they are produced
automatically without any rational analysis and verification (see the modern idea of the
subconscious) of whether they are correct or not, they need to be confirmed (epimarteresis:
confirmation), a process which must follow each assumption.
For beliefs they [the Epicureans] use the word hypolepsis which they claim can be
correct or incorrect.
[21]

Referring to the "focusing of thought into an impression" or else "intuitive understandings of the
mind", they are the impressions made on the mind that come from our sensations, concepts and
emotions and form the basis of our assumptions and beliefs. All this unity (sensation concept or
category emotion focusing of thought into an impression) leads to the formation of a certain
assumption or belief (hypolepsis). (Compare the modern anthropological concept of a "world
view".) Following the lead of Aristotle, Epicurus also refers to impressions in the form of mental

images which are projected on the mind. The "correct use of impressions" was something
adopted later by the Stoics.
Our assumptions and beliefs have to be 'confirmed', which actually proves if our opinions are
either accurate or inaccurate. This verification and confirmation (epimarteresis) can only be done
by means of the "evident reason" (henargeia), which means what is self-evident and obvious
through our sensory input.
An example is when we see somebody approaching us, first through the sense of eyesight, we
perceive that an object is coming closer to us, then through our preconceptions we understand
that it is a human being, afterwards through that assumption we can recognize that he is someone
we know, for example Theaetetus. This assumption is associated with pleasant or unpleasant
emotions accompanied by the respective mental images and impressions (the focusing of our
thoughts into an impression), which are related to our feelings toward each other. When he gets
close to us, we can confirm (verify) that he is Socrates and not Theaetetus through the proof of
our eyesight. Therefore, we have to use the same method to understand everything, even things
which are not observable and obvious (adela, imperceptible), that is to say the confirmation
through the evident reason (henargeia). In the same way we have to reduce (reductionism) each
assumption and belief to something that can be proved through the self-evident reason
(empirically verified). Verification theory and reductionism have been adopted, as we know, by
the modern philosophy of science. In this way, one can get rid of the incorrect assumptions and
beliefs (biases) and finally settle on the real (confirmed) facts.
Consequently the confirmation and lack of disagreement is the criterion of accuracy
of something, while non-confirmation and disagreement is the criterion of its
inaccuracy. The basis and foundation of [understanding] everything are the obvious
and self-evident [facts].
[22]

All the above mentioned criteria of knowledge form the basic principles of the [scientific]
method, that Epicurus followed in order to find the truth. He described this method in his work
On the Canon or On the Criteria.
If you reject any sensation and you do not distinguish between the opinion based on
what awaits confirmation and evidence already available based on the senses, the
feelings and every intuitive faculty of the mind, you will send the remaining
sensations into a turmoil with your foolish opinions, thus getting rid of every
standard for judging. And if among the perceptions based on beliefs are things that
are verified and things that are not, you are guaranteed to be in error since you
have kept everything that leads to uncertainty concerning the correct and incorrect.
[23]

(Based on excerpt from Epicurus' Gnoseology 'Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to
the Stoics Analysis and Fragments', Nikolaos Bakalis, Trafford Publishing 2005, ISBN 1-41204843-5)
Tetrapharmakos
Main article: Tetrapharmakos

Tetrapharmakos, or "The four-part cure", is Epicurus' basic guideline as to how to live the
happiest possible life. This poetic doctrine was handed down by an anonymous Epicurean who
summed up Epicurus' philosophy on happiness in four simple lines:
Don't fear god,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.
Philodemus, Herculaneum Papyrus, 1005, 4.9-14
Notable Epicureans

One of the earliest Roman writers espousing Epicureanism was Amafinius. Other adherents to
the teachings of Epicurus included the poet Horace, whose famous statement Carpe Diem
("Seize the Day") illustrates the philosophy, as well as Lucretius, as he showed in his De Rerum
Natura. The poet Virgil was another prominent Epicurean (see Lucretius for further details).
Julius Caesar leaned considerably toward Epicureanism and rejected the idea of an afterlife,
which e.g. led to his plea against the death sentence during the trial against Catiline, where he
spoke out against the Stoic Cato.[24]
In modern times Thomas Jefferson referred to himself as an Epicurean.[25] Other modern-day
Epicureans were Gassendi, Walter Charleton, Franois Bernier, Saint-Evremond, Ninon de
l'Enclos, Diderot, and Jeremy Bentham. Christopher Hitchens referred to himself as an
Epicurean.[26] In France, Michel Onfray has been developing a post-modern approach to
Epicureanism.[27]
Modern usage and misconceptions

In modern popular usage, an epicure is a connoisseur of the arts of life and the refinements of
sensual pleasures; epicureanism implies a love or knowledgeable enjoyment especially of good
food and drinksee the definition of gourmet at Wiktionary.
Because Epicureanism posits that pleasure is the ultimate good (telos), it has been commonly
misunderstood since ancient times as a doctrine that advocates the partaking in fleeting pleasures

such as constant partying, sexual excess and decadent food. This is not the case. Epicurus
regarded ataraxia (tranquility, freedom from fear) and aponia (absence of pain) as the height of
happiness. He also considered prudence an important virtue and perceived excess and
overindulgence to be contrary to the attainment of ataraxia and aponia.[citation needed]

Popular Bible Verses

These Bible verses are the most popular and most quoted verses. They inspire, encourage, feed
the mind, and heal the soul.

1. 2 Timothy 1:12
...I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able
to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

2. Psalms 23:4
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

3. Acts 2:38
...Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission
of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

4. Isaiah 26:9
With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek
thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn
righteousness.

5. John 13:34
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that
ye also love one another.

6. Job 12:9

Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?

7. 2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness:

8. Genesis 8:22
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and
winter, and day and night shall not cease.

9. John 1:3
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

10. Proverbs 13:11

Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall
increase.

11. Romans 12:2

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

12. Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

13. Revelation 21:4

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are
passed away.

14. Psalms 62:1

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and
my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved.

15. 2 Corinthians 12:9

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in
weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of
Christ may rest upon me.

16. Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

17. Matthew 28:18

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and
in earth.

18. Ecclesiastes 3:1

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to
be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

19. Galatians 6:9

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

20. Psalms 119:90

Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.

21. 1 Corinthians 13:13

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

22. Psalms 16:11

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand
there are pleasures for evermore.

23. Matthew 18:3

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

24. Isaiah 26:3

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in
thee.

25. Philippians 4:7

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus.

26. Exodus 20:3

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

27. Ephesians 5:2

And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering
and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

28. Psalms 118:24

This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

29. Romans 8:28

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who
are the called according to his purpose.

30. Joshua 1:8

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein
day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for
then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

31. Colossians 3:23

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;

32. Psalms 12:6

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified
seven times.

33. Matthew 7:7

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you:

34. Proverbs 18:10

The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.

35. Philippians 4:6

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known unto God.

36. Psalms 23:1

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

37. 1 Peter 5:8

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about,
seeking whom he may devour:

38. Psalms 7:8

The LORD shall judge the people: judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness,
and according to mine integrity that is in me.

39. Philippians 1:6

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will
perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

40. Nahum 1:7

The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in
him.

41. Romans 12:14

Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

42. Habakkuk 3:19

The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will
make me to walk upon mine high places...

43. James 1:12

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the
crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

44. Psalms 19:1

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

45. 1 Corinthians 2:9

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of
man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

46. Psalms 83:18

That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over
all the earth.

47. John 1:12

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to
them that believe on his name:

48. Isaiah 53:4

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted.

49. Romans 5:8

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us.

50. Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them.

51. Matthew 5:44

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that
hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

52. Matthew 6:20

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

53. Psalms 31:19

Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou
hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!

54. Philippians 4:19

But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

55. Psalms 104:24

O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is
full of thy riches.

56. Romans 7:6

But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we
should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

57. Isaiah 54:17

No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise
against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the
LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.

58. 1 Peter 3:15

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every
man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

59. Psalms 10:17

LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt
cause thine ear to hear:

60. Matthew 6:33

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be
added unto you.

61. Psalms 19:14

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O
LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

62. 2 Peter 3:10

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall
pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also
and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

63. Lamentations 3:22

It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

64. Galatians 5:22

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

65. Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

66. 2 Corinthians 3:18

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into
the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

67. Proverbs 3:6

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

68. Hebrews 11:6

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

69. 2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek
my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sin, and will heal their land.

70. Acts 1:8

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be
witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the
uttermost part of the earth.

71. Psalms 89:1

I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy
faithfulness to all generations.

72. John 13:35

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

73. Psalms 108:3

I will praise thee, O LORD, among the people: and I will sing praises unto thee among
the nations.

74. 1 Peter 5:7

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

75. Psalms 16:8

I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be
moved.

76. 1 Corinthians 13:4

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not
puffed up,

77. Galatians 3:13

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is
written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:

78. Micah 6:8

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

79. Matthew 11:28

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

80. Joshua 1:9

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be
thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

81. James 5:16

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The
effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

82. Psalms 61:2

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to
the rock that is higher than I.

83. Luke 12:27

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

84. Isaiah 9:6

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his
shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The
everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

85. Luke 12:24

Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor
barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

86. Psalms 5:12

For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a
shield.

87. Philippians 4:8

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these
things.

88. Psalms 125:3

For the rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous; lest the righteous put
forth their hands unto iniquity.

89. Romans 3:23

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

90. Psalms 11:7

For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

91. Ephesians 2:8

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

92. Psalms 12:5

For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the
LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.

93. Colossians 1:16

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and
invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things
were created by him, and for him:

94. Psalms 84:11

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good
thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

95. 2 Timothy 1:7

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound
mind.

96. Isaiah 55:8

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

97. Hebrews 6:10

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed
toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.

98. Isaiah 44:3

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour
my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring:

99. John 3:17

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through
him might be saved.

100. Job 19:25

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latterday upon the
earth:

101. John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

102. Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and
not of evil, to give you an expected end.

103. 2 Corinthians 5:21

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him.

104. Psalms 30:5

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a
night, but joy cometh in the morning.

105. Romans 8:38

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

106. Psalms 91:11

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

107. Psalms 84:10

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house
of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

108. Romans 5:17

For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive
abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

109. Isaiah 41:10

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen
thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

110. Matthew 11:30

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

111. Psalms 37:4

Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

112. 1 Thessalonians 1:5

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost,
and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your
sake.

113. Isaiah 40:31

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

114. Romans 1:20

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they
are without excuse:

115. Isaiah 64:8

But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all
are the work of thy hand.

116. 1 Timothy 6:10

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have
erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

117. Psalms 5:11

But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because
thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee.

118. Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord.

119. Psalms 13:5

But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.

120. Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and
is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

121. Isaiah 53:5

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

122. Ephesians 2:10

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them.

123. Malachi 3:10

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and
prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of
heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

124. Hebrews 3:14

For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast
unto the end;

125. Psalms 1:1

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way
of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

126. Psalms 119:2

Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart.

127. 2 Corinthians 5:7

For we walk by faith, not by sight

128. Psalms 133:1

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

129. Ephesians 6:12

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places.

130. Deuteronomy 31:6

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God,
he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

131. Matthew 16:26

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

132. Psalms 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God...

133. 1 John 5:4

For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith.

134. Isaiah 60:1

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.

135. Matthew 18:20

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

136. Psalms 9:10

And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not
forsaken them that seek thee.

137. Galatians 5:13

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the
flesh, but by love serve one another.

138. Hebrews 2:14

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise
took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of
death, that is, the devil;

139. Exodus 33:22

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the
rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

140. Matthew 28:19

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

141. Joshua 24:15

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve;
whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the
gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve
the LORD.

142. John 15:13

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

143. Psalms 1:3

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in
his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

144. John 9:25

He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that,
whereas I was blind, now I see.

145. Genesis 1:26

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

146. 1 John 3:16

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought
to lay down our lives for the brethren.

147. Genesis 1:3

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

148. 2 Timothy 1:13

Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which
is in Christ Jesus.

149. Matthew 19:19

Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

150. Isaiah 32:2

And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as
rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

151. 1 Peter 5:6

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due
time:

152. Isaiah 53:6

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the
LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

153. Ephesians 5:25

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

154. Proverbs 17:22

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

155. Galatians 2:20

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself for me.

156. Psalms 9:1

...I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous
works.

157. Romans 12:1

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

158. Nehemiah 8:10

...for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your
strength.

159. Philippians 4:13

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

160. 2 Timothy 4:7

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:

161. Acts 20:35

I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to
remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to
receive.

162. Philippians 1:3

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you...

163. 1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.

164. John 14:2

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to
prepare a place for you.

165. John 1:1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

166. John 11:25

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he
were dead, yet shall he live:

167. Mark 9:23

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

168. Matthew 22:37

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind.

169. John 14:6

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father,
but by me.

170. James 1:3

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

171. Colossians 3:16

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the
Lord.

172. Hebrews 4:16

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find
grace to help in time of need.

173. Hebrews 13:5

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye
have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

174. Matthew 5:16

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your
Father which is in heaven.

175. Hebrews 12:2

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of
the throne of God.

176. James 1:2

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;

177. Acts 4:12

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given
among men, whereby we must be saved.

178. 2 Timothy 2:19

Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth
them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

179. Matthew 6:24

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else
he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

180. 1 John 4:12

No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his
love is perfected in us.

181. Hebrews 10:25

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but
exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

182. Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

183. 2 Corinthians 2:14

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh
manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.

184. Romans 15:13

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in
hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

185. Ephesians 3:20

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,
according to the power that worketh in us,

186. Romans 11:33

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable
are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

187. John 14:27

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

188. Ephesians 6:11

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil.

189. Colossians 3:12

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness,
humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;

190. John 15:20

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they
have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will
keep yours also.

191. Romans 10:17

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

192. 2 Timothy 2:15

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.

193. James 4:7

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

194. Matthew 11:29

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall
find rest unto your souls.

195. Matthew 28:20

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am
with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

196. Romans 10:9

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

197. John 10:10

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they
might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

198. Acts 18:9

Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold
not thy peace:

199. 1 Corinthians 10:13

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful,
who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation
also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

200. 1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He
that feareth is not made perfect in love.

201. Matthew 7:12

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them: for this is the law and the prophets.

202. Romans 5:1

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ:

203. 2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become new.

204. John 16:33

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye
shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

205. John 5:24

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent
me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death
unto life.

206. Mark 14:38

Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is
weak.

207. 1 Corinthians 6:19

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

208. 1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but
when I became a man, I put away childish things.

209. 2 Peter 1:4

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might
be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust.

210. 2 Thessalonians 1:11

Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this
calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:

211. Hebrews 12:28

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby
we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

212. 1 Peter 1:8

Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:

213. John 15:16

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and
bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the
Father in my name, he may give it you.

214. Psalms 27:1

...The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength
of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

215. Matthew 18:18

Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

216. Psalms 91:1

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty.

217. Matthew 18:11

For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

218. 1 John 4:4

Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in
you, than he that is in the world.

219. Acts 17:28

For in him we live, and move, and have our being...

220. James 4:10

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

221. Romans 8:39

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

222. Philippians 2:12

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now
much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

223. Matthew 17:20

...If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove
hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

224. 1 John 5:12

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

225. Psalms 55:22

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the
righteous to be moved.

226. 1 Peter 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant
mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead,

227. Deuteronomy 6:7

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou
sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and
when thou risest up.

228. Ephesians 5:20

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ;

229. 1 Peter 2:24

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins,
should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

230. Philippians 4:4

Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.

231. Matthew 25:23

...Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will
make thee ruler over many things...

232. 1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but
when I became a man, I put away childish things.

233. Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and
instruction.

234. Psalms 100:4

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto
him, and bless his name.

235. Matthew 7:1

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

236. Psalms 56:3

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.

237. Mark 10:27

...With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.

238. Genesis 28:15

And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will
bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I
have spoken to thee of.

239. Romans 1:16

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to
every one that believeth...

240. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Pray without ceasing.

241. Psalms 100:5

For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

242. 1 John 4:16

And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

243. Romans 10:13

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

244. 1 Corinthians 1:18

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are
saved it is the power of God.

245. Isaiah 41:13

For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help
thee.

246. Psalms 119:105

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

247. 1 John 5:14

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his
will, he heareth us:

248. Revelation 4:11

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all
things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

249. 1 John 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of
God, and knoweth God.

250. Proverbs 6:6

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:

251. Isaiah 44:22

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return
unto me; for I have redeemed thee.

252. Jeremiah 32:17

Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and
stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:

253. Job 36:27

For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapour
thereof:

254. Luke 2:11

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

255. Psalms 24:1

...The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

Immanuel Kant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

"Kant" redirects here. For other uses, see Kant (disambiguation).

See also: Kant (surname)
Immanuel Kant

Born

22 April 1724
Knigsberg, Kingdom of Prussia
(now Kaliningrad, Russia)

Died

12 February 1804 (aged 79)

Knigsberg, Kingdom of Prussia

Residence

Kingdom of Prussia

Nationality

German

Era

18th-century philosophy

Region

Western philosophy

School

Kantianism
Enlightenment philosophy

Main interest Epistemology Metaphysics

s
Ethics
Categorical imperative
Transcendental idealism
Notable idea
Synthetic a priori
s
Noumenon Sapere aude
Nebular hypothesis

Influenced by[show]
Influenced[show]
Signature

Part of a series on
Immanuel Kant

People

George Berkeley

Ren Descartes

Fichte

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

G. W. F. Hegel
David Hume

Arthur Schopenhauer

Baruch Spinoza

African Spir
Johannes Tetens

Major works

Critique of Pure Reason

Prolegomena

What Is Enlightenment?

Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

Critique of Practical Reason

Critique of Judgement

Religion within the Bounds of Bare

Reason

Metaphysics of Morals

Kantianism and Kantian ethics

Transcendental idealism

Critical philosophy

Sapere aude

Schema

A priori and a posteriori

Analytic-synthetic distinction

Noumenon

Categories

Categorical imperative

Hypothetical imperative

"Kingdom of Ends"

Political philosophy
Related topics

German idealism

Schopenhauer's criticism

Neo-Kantianism

Immanuel Kant (German: [manuel kant]; 22 April 1724 12 February 1804) was a German
philosopher who is widely considered to be a central figure of modern philosophy. He argued
that human concepts and categories structure our view of the world and its laws, and that reason
is the source of morality. His thought continues to hold a major influence in contemporary
thought, especially in fields such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and
aesthetics.[1]
Kant's major work, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781),[2] aimed to
bring reason together with experience and to move beyond what he took to be failures of
traditional philosophy and metaphysics. He hoped to end an age of speculation where objects

outside experience were seen to support what he saw as futile theories, while resisting the
skepticism of thinkers such as Hume.
He stated:
It always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the
existence of things outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and
that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a
satisfactory proof.[3]

Kant proposed a "Copernican Revolution-in-reverse", saying that:

Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects;
but ... let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of
metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition. [4]

In simple terms, Kant argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of our
minds. The mind shapes and structures experience so that, on an abstract level, all human
experience shares certain essential structural features. Among other things, Kant believed that the
concepts of space and time are integral to all human experience, as are our concepts of cause and
effect.[5] We never have direct experience of things, the noumenal world, and what we do
experience is the phenomenal world as conveyed by our senses. These observations summarize
Kant's views upon the subjectobject problem.
Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history.
These included the Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788), the
Metaphysics of Morals (Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797), which dealt with ethics, and the
Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790), which looks at aesthetics and teleology. He
aimed to resolve disputes between empirical and rationalist approaches. The former asserted that
all knowledge comes through experience; the latter maintained that reason and innate ideas were
prior. Kant argued that experience is purely subjective without first being processed by pure
reason. He also said that using reason without applying it to experience only leads to theoretical
illusions. The free and proper exercise of reason by the individual was a theme both of the
Enlightenment, and of Kant's approaches to the various problems of philosophy.
His ideas influenced many thinkers in Germany during his lifetime. He settled and moved
philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. The philosophers Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer amended and developed the Kantian system, thus bringing
about various forms of German idealism. He is seen as a major figure in the history and
development of philosophy. German and European thinking progressed after his time, and his
influence still inspires philosophical work today.[6]
Contents

1 Biography
o

1.1 The young scholar

1.2 Early work

1.3 The silent decade

1.4 Mature work

2 Philosophy
o

2.1 Theory of perception

2.2 Categories of the Faculty of Understanding

2.3 Schema

2.4 Moral philosophy

2.4.1 The first formulation

2.4.2 The second formulation

2.4.3 The third formulation

2.4.4 Idea of God

2.4.5 Idea of freedom

2.4.6 The categories of freedom

2.5 Aesthetic philosophy

2.6 Political philosophy

3 Anthropology

4 Influence
o

4.1 Historical influence

4.2 Influence on modern thinkers

5 Tomb and statue

6 List of works

7 See also
o

7.1 Criticism

8 Footnotes

9 References and further reading

9.1 General introductions to his thought

9.2 Biography and historical context

9.3 Collections of essays

9.4 Theoretical philosophy

9.5 Practical philosophy

9.6 Aesthetics

9.7 Philosophy of religion

9.8 Other work

9.9 Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence

10 External links

Biography

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Knigsberg, the capital of Prussia at that time, today the city
of Kaliningrad in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. He was the fourth of nine children
(four of them reached adulthood). Baptized 'Emanuel', he changed his name to 'Immanuel'[7] after
learning Hebrew. In his entire life, he never traveled more than ten miles from Knigsberg.[8] His
father, Johann Georg Kant (16821746), was a German harnessmaker from Memel, at the time
Prussia's most northeastern city (now Klaipda, Lithuania). His mother, Anna Regina Reuter
(16971737), was born in Nuremberg.[9] Kant's paternal grandfather had emigrated from
Scotland to East Prussia, and his father still spelled their family name "Cant".[10] In his youth,
Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. He was brought up in a Pietist household that
stressed intense religious devotion, personal humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Kant received a stern education strict, punitive, and disciplinary that preferred Latin and
religious instruction over mathematics and science.[11] Despite being raised in a religious
household and still maintaining a belief in God, he was skeptical of religion in later life and was
an agnostic.[12][13][14][15][16][17] The common myths concerning Kant's personal mannerisms are
enumerated, explained, and refuted in Goldthwait's introduction to his translation of

Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.[18] It is often held that Kant lived a
very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their
clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but did not seem to lack a rewarding social life - he
was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major
philosophical works.
The young scholar

Kant showed a great aptitude to study at an early age. He was first sent to Collegium
Fredericianum and then enrolled at the University of Knigsberg (where he would spend his
entire career) in 1740, at the age of 16.[19] He studied the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff under
Martin Knutzen, a rationalist who was also familiar with developments in British philosophy and
science and who introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Newton. Knutzen
dissuaded Kant from the theory of pre-established harmony, which he regarded as "the pillow for
the lazy mind". He also dissuaded the young scholar from idealism, which was negatively
regarded by most philosophers in the 18th century. (The theory of transcendental idealism that
Kant developed in the Critique of Pure Reason is not traditional idealism, i.e. the idea that reality
is purely mental. In fact, Kant produced arguments against traditional idealism in the second part
of the Critique of Pure Reason.) His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his
studies. Kant became a private tutor in the smaller towns surrounding Knigsberg, but continued
his scholarly research. 1747 saw the publication of his first philosophical work, Thoughts on the
True Estimation of Living Forces.
Early work

Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made
significant contributions to other disciplines. He made an important astronomical discovery,
namely a discovery about the nature of the Earth's rotation, for which he won the Berlin
Academy Prize in 1754.[citation needed]
According to Lord Kelvin:
"Kant pointed out in the middle of last century, what had not previously been discovered by
mathematicians or physical astronomers, that the frictional resistance against tidal currents on the
earth's surface must cause a diminution of the earth's rotational speed. This immense discovery in
Natural Philosophy seems to have attracted little attention,--indeed to have passed quite
unnoticed,--among mathematicians, and astronomers, and naturalists, until about 1840, when the
doctrine of energy began to be taken to heart."
Lord Kelvin, physicist, 1897

According to Thomas Huxley:

"The sort of geological speculation to which I am now referring (geological aetiology, in short)
was created as a science by that famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant, when, in 1775 [1755], he
wrote his General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies; or, an Attempt to Account
for the Constitutional and Mechanical Origin of the Universe, upon Newtonian Principles."
Thomas H. Huxley, 1869

In the General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und
Theorie des Himmels) (1755), Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the
Solar System formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. He thus attempted to explain the order
of the solar system, seen previously by Newton as being imposed from the beginning by God.
Kant also correctly deduced that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized also
formed from a (much larger) spinning cloud of gas. He further suggested the possibility that
other nebulae might also be similarly large and distant disks of stars. These postulations opened
new horizons for astronomy: for the first time extending astronomy beyond the solar system to
galactic and extragalactic realms.[20]
From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to
write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important
works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was
published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the
Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of
a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764, Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of
the Beautiful and Sublime and then was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy
prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural
Theology and Morality (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1770, at the age of 45, Kant
was finally appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Knigsberg. Kant
wrote his inaugural dissertation in defence of this appointment. This work saw the emergence of
several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of
intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. Not to observe this distinction would mean to
commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in
avoidance of this error does metaphysics flourish.
The issue that vexed Kant was central to what twentieth century scholars termed "the philosophy
of mind." The flowering of the natural sciences had led to an understanding of how data reaches
the brain. Sunlight may fall upon a distant object, whereupon light is reflected from various parts
of the object in a way that maps the surface features (color, texture, etc.) of the object. The light
reaches the eye of a human observer, passes through the cornea, is focused by the lens upon the
retina where it forms an image similar to that formed by light passing through a pinhole into a
camera obscura. The retinal cells next send impulses through the optic nerve and thereafter they
form a mapping in the brain of the visual features of the distant object. The interior mapping is

not the exterior thing being mapped, and our belief that there is a meaningful relationship
between the exterior object and the mapping in the brain depends on a chain of reasoning that is
not fully grounded. But the uncertainty aroused by these considerations, the uncertainties raised
by optical illusions, misperceptions, delusions, etc., are not the end of the problems.
Kant saw that the mind could not function as an empty container that simply receives data from
the outside. Something must be giving order to the incoming data. Images of external objects
must be kept in the same sequence in which they were received. This ordering occurs through the
mind's intuition of time. The same considerations apply to the mind's function of constituting
space for ordering mappings of visual and tactile signals arriving via the already described
chains of physical causation.
It is often held that Kant was a late developer, that he only became an important philosopher in
his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works
relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent
Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a
degree of continuity with his mature work.[21]
The silent decade

At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher.
Much was expected of him. In correspondence with his ex-student and friend Markus Herz, Kant
admitted that, in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation and
connection between our sensible and intellectual facultieshe needed to explain how we
combine sensory knowledge with reasoned knowledge, these being related but very different
processes. He also credited David Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa
1771).[22] Hume had stated that experience consists only of sequences of feelings, images or
sounds. Ideas such as 'cause', goodness, or objects were not evident in experience, so why do we
believe in the reality of these? Kant felt that reason could remove this skepticism, and he set
himself to solving these problems. He did not publish any work in philosophy for the next eleven
years.

Immanuel Kant

Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself. He resisted
friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. In 1778, in response to one of these offers by a
former pupil, Kant wrote:
"Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving
my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if
I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any
length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to
undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my
current condition from any disturbance."[23]
When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason.
Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy,
this Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages
in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and
these granted no significance to the work. Its density made it, as Johann Gottfried Herder put it
in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack," obscured by "all this heavy
gossamer".[24] Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant received for earlier works,
such as his Prize Essay and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received
and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold
by the page.[25] Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books sold
well, and by the time he published Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime in
1764 he had become a popular author of some note.[26] Kant was disappointed with the first

Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics in 1783 as a summary of its main views. He also
encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a brief commentary on the Critique of Pure
Reason.
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the
1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source.
In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series of public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In
these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual
controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently
deceased G. E. Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such
a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn,
and a bitter public dispute arose among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a
general debate over the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason itself. Reinhold
maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by
defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant
the most famous philosopher of his era.
Mature work

Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) in
1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other
areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of
Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790
Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology.
In 1792, Kant's attempt to publish the Second of the four Pieces of Religion within the Bounds of
Bare Reason, in the journal Berlinische Monatsschrift, met with opposition from the King's
censorship commission, which had been established that same year in the context of 1789 French
Revolution.[27] Kant then arranged to have all four pieces published as a book, routing it through
the philosophy department at the University of Jena to avoid the need for theological censorship.
[citation needed]
Kant got a now famous reprimand from the King,[27] for this action of insubordination.
When he nevertheless published a second edition in 1794, the censor was so irate that he
arranged for a royal order that required Kant never to publish or even speak publicly about
religion.[citation needed] Kant then published his response to the King's reprimand and explained
himself, in the preface of The Conflict of the Faculties.[27]
He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics.
These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status

in eighteenth century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and
criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in
another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and
Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. The
progressive stages of revision of Kant's teachings marked the emergence of German Idealism.
Kant opposed these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799.[28] It
was one of his final acts expounding a stance on philosophical questions. In 1800, a student of
Kant, Gottlob Benjamin Jsche, published a manual of logic for teachers called Logik, which he
had prepared at Kant's request. Jsche prepared the Logik using a copy of a textbook in logic by
Georg Freidrich Meier entitled Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre, in which Kant had written copious
notes and annotations. The Logik has been considered of fundamental importance to Kant's
philosophy, and the understanding of it. The great nineteenth century logician Charles Sanders
Peirce remarked, in an incomplete review of Thomas Kingsmill Abbott's English translation of
the introduction to the Logik, that "Kant's whole philosophy turns upon his logic."[29] Also,
Robert Schirokauer Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz, wrote in the translators' introduction to
their English translation of the Logik, "Its importance lies not only in its significance for the
Critique of Pure Reason, the second part of which is a restatement of fundamental tenets of the
Logic, but in its position within the whole of Kant's work."[30]
Kant's health, long poor, took a turn for the worse and he died at Knigsberg on 12 February
1804, uttering "Es ist gut" ("It is good") before expiring.[31] His unfinished final work, the
fragmentary Opus Postumum, was, as its title suggests, published posthumously.
Philosophy

In Kant's essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", Kant defined the
Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude ("Dare to Know"). Kant
maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. His
work reconciled many of the differences between the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the
18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the
19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers.
Kant asserted that, because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable
evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of
morality and as a ground for reason, Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even
though they could never know God's presence empirically. He explained:
All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality
directed to those three problems only [God, the soul, and freedom]. However, these three
elements in themselves still hold independent, proportional, objective weight individually.
Moreover, in a collective relational context; namely, to know what ought to be done: if the will is

free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this concerns our actions with reference
to the highest aims of life, we see that the ultimate intention of nature in her wise provision was
really, in the constitution of our reason, directed to moral interests only.[32]
The sense of an enlightened approach and the critical method required that "If one cannot prove
that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often
occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives
hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Hence the question no longer is
as to whether perpetual peace is a real thing or not a real thing, or as to whether we may not be
deceiving ourselves when we adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of
its being real."[33] The presupposition of God, soul, and freedom was then a practical concern, for
"Morality, by itself, constitutes a system, but happiness does not, unless it is distributed in exact
proportion to morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible world only under a wise
author and ruler. Reason compels us to admit such a ruler, together with life in such a world,
which we must consider as future life, or else all moral laws are to be considered as idle
dreams... ."[34]
Kant claimed to have created a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. This involved two
interconnected foundations of his "critical philosophy":

the epistemology of Transcendental Idealism and

the moral philosophy of the autonomy of practical reason.

These teachings placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral
worlds. Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science was not just the
fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions.
Conceptual unification and integration is carried out by the mind through concepts or the
"categories of the understanding" operating on the perceptual manifold within space and time.
The latter are not concepts,[35] but are forms of sensibility that are a priori necessary conditions
for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that
operates within it are dependent upon the mind's processes, the product of the rule-based activity
that Kant called, "synthesis. There is much discussion among Kant scholars on the correct
interpretation of this train of thought.
The 'two-world' interpretation regards Kant's position as a statement of epistemological
limitation, that we are not able to transcend the bounds of our own mind, meaning that we cannot
access the "thing-in-itself". Kant, however, also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental
object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in
abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this line of thought, some interpreters
have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a

way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone this is known as the twoaspect view.
The notion of the "thing in itself" was much discussed by those who came after Kant. It was
argued that since the "thing in itself" was unknowable its existence could not simply be assumed.
Rather than arbitrarily switching to an account that was ungrounded in anything supposed to be
the "real," as did the German Idealists, another group arose to ask how our (presumably reliable)
accounts of a coherent and rule-abiding universe were actually grounded. This new kind of
philosophy became known as Phenomenology, and its founder was Edmund Husserl.
With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the
human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather is only the good will itself. A good
will is one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law that the autonomous
human being freely gives itself. This law obliges one to treat humanity understood as rational
agency, and represented through oneself as well as others as an end in itself rather than
(merely) as means to other ends the individual might hold. This necessitates practical selfreflection in which we universalize our reasons.
These ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and
analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy.
Nevertheless, his theses that the mind itself necessarily makes a constitutive contribution to its
knowledge, that this contribution is transcendental rather than psychological, that philosophy
involves self-critical activity, that morality is rooted in human freedom, and that to act
autonomously is to act according to rational moral principles have all had a lasting effect on
subsequent philosophy.
Theory of perception
Main article: The Critique of Pure Reason

Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work The Critique of Pure Reason,
which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in
modern philosophy. Kant maintains that our understanding of the external world had its
foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, thus offering
a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what he and others referred to as
his "Copernican revolution".[36]
Firstly, Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions:
1. Analytic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its
subject concept; e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried," or, "All bodies take up
space."

2. Synthetic proposition: a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained

in its subject concept ; e.g., "All bachelors are happy," or, "All bodies have
weight."

Analytic propositions are true by nature of the meaning of the words involved in the sentence
we require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand this proposition. On
the other hand, synthetic statements are those that tell us something about the world. The truth or
falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside of their linguistic content. In
this instance, weight is not a necessary predicate of the body; until we are told the heaviness of
the body we do not know that it has weight. In this case, experience of the body is required
before its heaviness becomes clear. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (cf. Hume) and
rationalists (cf. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience to be known.
Kant, however, contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic
a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge, but knowledge that is not derived from
experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. That is, he
argues that the possibility of experience depends on certain necessary conditionswhich he calls
a priori formsand that these conditions structure and hold true of the world of experience. In
so doing, his main claims in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" are that mathematic judgments are
synthetic a priori and in addition, that Space and Time are not derived from experience but rather
are its preconditions.
Once we have grasped the concepts of addition, subtraction or the functions of basic arithmetic,
we do not need any empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and in this way it would
appear that arithmetic is in fact analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved thus: if the
numbers five and seven in the calculation 5 + 7 = 12 are examined, there is nothing to be found
in them by which the number 12 can be inferred. Such it is that "5 + 7" and "the cube root of
1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is notthat the
mathematic judgment "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and
undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. And so Kant proves a proposition can be
synthetic and known a priori.
Kant asserts that experience is based both upon the perception of external objects and a priori
knowledge.[37] The external world, he writes, provides those things that we sense. It is our mind,
though, that processes this information about the world and gives it order, allowing us to
comprehend it. Our mind supplies the conditions of space and time to experience objects.
According to the "transcendental unity of apperception", the concepts of the mind
(Understanding) and the perceptions or intuitions that garner information from phenomena
(Sensibility) are synthesized by comprehension. Without the concepts, intuitions are nondescript;
without the intuitions, concepts are meaninglessthus the famous statement, "Thoughts without
content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."[38]

Kant also makes the claim that an external environment is necessary for the establishment of the
self. Although Kant would want to argue that there is no empirical way of observing the self, we
can see the logical necessity of the self when we observe that we can have different perceptions
of the external environment over time. By uniting all of these general representations into one
global representation, we can see how a transcendental self emerges. I am therefore conscious
of the identical self in regard to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an
intuition because I call them all together my representations."[39]
Categories of the Faculty of Understanding
See also: Category (Kant)

Kant statue in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

In studying the work of Kant one must realize that there is a distinction between "understanding"
as the general concept (in German, das Verstehen) and the "understanding" as a faculty of the
human mind (in German, der Verstand, "the intellect"). In much English language scholarship,
the word "understanding" is used in both senses.
Kant deemed it obvious that we have some objective knowledge of the world, such as, say,
Newtonian physics. But this knowledge relies on synthetic, a priori laws of nature, like causality
and substance. The problem, then, is how this is possible. Kant's solution was to reason that the
subject must supply laws that make experience of objects possible, and that these laws are the
synthetic, a priori laws of nature that we know apply to all objects before we experience them.
So, to deduce all these laws, Kant examined experience in general, dissecting in it what is

supplied by the mind from what is supplied by the given intuitions. What has just been explicated
is commonly called a transcendental reduction.[40]
To begin with, Kant's distinction between the a posteriori being contingent and particular
knowledge, and the a priori being universal and necessary knowledge, must be kept in mind. For
if we merely connect two intuitions together in a perceiving subject, the knowledge is always
subjective because it is derived a posteriori, when what is desired is for the knowledge to be
objective, that is, for the two intuitions to refer to the object and hold good of it necessarily
universally for anyone at anytime, not just the perceiving subject in its current condition. What
else is equivalent to objective knowledge besides the a priori, that is to say, universal and
necessary knowledge? Nothing else, and hence before knowledge can be objective, it must be
incorporated under an a priori category of the understanding.[40][41]
For example, say a subject says, "The sun shines on the stone; the stone grows warm," which is
all he perceives in perception. His judgment is contingent and holds no necessity. But if he says,
"The sunshine causes the stone to warm," he subsumes the perception under the category of
causality, which is not found in the perception, and necessarily synthesizes the concept sunshine
with the concept heat, producing a necessarily universally true judgment.[40]
To explain the categories in more detail, they are the preconditions of the construction of objects
in the mind. Indeed, to even think of the sun and stone presupposes the category of subsistence,
that is, substance. For the categories synthesize the random data of the sensory manifold into
intelligible objects. This means that the categories are also the most abstract things one can say
of any object whatsoever, and hence one can have an a priori cognition of the totality of all
objects of experience if one can list all of them. To do so, Kant formulates another transcendental
deduction.[40]
Judgments are, for Kant, the preconditions of any thought. Man thinks via judgments, so all
possible judgments must be listed and the perceptions connected within them put aside, so as to
make it possible to examine the moments when the understanding is engaged in constructing
judgments. For the categories are equivalent to these moments, in that they are concepts of
intuitions in general, so far as they are determined by these moments universally and necessarily.
Thus by listing all the moments, one can deduce from them all of the categories.[40]
One may now ask: How many possible judgments are there? Kant believed that all the possible
propositions within Aristotle's syllogistic logic are equivalent to all possible judgments, and that
all the logical operators within the propositions are equivalent to the moments of the
understanding within judgments. Thus he listed Aristotle's system in four groups of three:
quantity (universal, particular, singular), quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), relation
(categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodeictic). The
parallelism with Kant's categories is obvious: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality,

negation, limitation), relation (substance, cause, community) and modality (possibility, existence,
necessity).[40]
The fundamental building blocks of experience, i.e. objective knowledge, are now in place. First
there is the sensibility, which supplies the mind with intuitions, and then there is the
understanding, which produces judgments of these intuitions and can subsume them under
categories. These categories lift the intuitions up out of the subject's current state of
consciousness and place them within consciousness in general, producing universally necessary
knowledge. For the categories are innate in any rational being, so any intuition thought within a
category in one mind is necessarily subsumed and understood identically in any mind. In other
words we filter what we see and hear.[40]
Schema
See also: Schema (Kant)

Kant ran into a problem with his theory that the mind plays a part in producing objective
knowledge. Intuitions and categories are entirely disparate, so how can they interact? Kant's
solution is the schema: a priori principles by which the transcendental imagination connects
concepts with intuitions through time. All the principles are temporally bound, for if a concept is
purely a priori, as the categories are, then they must apply for all times. Hence there are
principles such as substance is that which endures through time, and the cause must always be
prior to the effect.[42][43]
Moral philosophy

Immanuel Kant

Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
(1785),[44] Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).
In the Groundwork, Kant's method involves trying to convert our everyday, obvious, rational[45]
knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. The latter two works followed a method of
using "practical reason", which is based only upon things about which reason can tell us, and not
deriving any principles from experience, to reach conclusions which are able to be applied to the
world of experience (in the second part of The Metaphysic of Morals).
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the
"Categorical Imperative", and is derived from the concept of duty. Kant defines the demands of
the moral law as "categorical imperatives". Categorical imperatives are principles that are
intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all, and by all,
situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. It is from the
Categorical Imperative that all other moral obligations are generated, and by which all moral
obligations can be tested. Kant also stated that the moral means and ends can be applied to the
categorical imperative, that rational beings can pursue certain "ends" using the appropriate
"means". Ends that are based on physical needs or wants always gives merely hypothetical
imperatives. The categorical imperative, however, may be based only on something that is an
"end in itself". That is, an end that is a means only to itself and not to some other need, desire, or
purpose.[46] He believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on
contingent facts about the world, such as what would make us happy, but to act upon the moral
law which has no other motive than "worthiness of being happy".[47] Accordingly, he believed
that moral obligation applies only to rational agents.[48]
A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it has the force of an obligation
regardless of our will or desires (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative)[49] In Groundwork of
the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) Kant enumerated three formulations of the categorical
imperative that he believed to be roughly equivalent.[50]
Kant believed that if an action is not done with the motive of duty, then it is without moral value.
He thought that every action should have pure intention behind it; otherwise it was meaningless.
He did not necessarily believe that the final result was the most important aspect of an action, but
that how the person felt while carrying out the action was the time at which value was set to the
result.
In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant also posited the "counter-utilitarian idea that
there is a difference between preferences and values and that considerations of individual rights
temper calculations of aggregate utility", a concept that is an axiom in economics:[51]

Everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something
else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no
equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something
can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a
dignity. (p. 53, italics in original).
A phrase quoted by Kant, which is used to summarize the counter-utilitarian nature of his moral
philosophy, is Fiat justitia, pereat mundus, ("Let justice be done, though the world perish"),
which he translates loosely as "Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish
from it". This appears in his 1795 Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer
Entwurf.), Appendix 1.[52][53][54]
The first formulation

The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) of the moral imperative "requires that the
maxims be chosen as though they should hold as universal laws of nature" .[50] This formulation
in principle has as its supreme law the creed "Always act according to that maxim whose
universality as a law you can at the same time will" and is the "only condition under which a will
can never come into conflict with itself [....]"[55]
One interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test".[56] An agent's
maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of human actions": that is, what the agent
believes is his reason to act.[57] The universalisability test has five steps:
1. Find the agent's maxim (i.e., an action paired with its motivation). Take for
example the declaration "I will lie for personal benefit". Lying is the action;
the motivation is to fulfill some sort of desire. Paired together, they form the
maxim.
2. Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the realworld agent followed that maxim. With no exception of one's self. This is in
order for you to hold people to the same principle required of yourself.
3. Decide whether any contradictions or irrationalities arise in the possible world
as a result of following the maxim.
4. If a contradiction or irrationality arises, acting on that maxim is not allowed in
the real world.
5. If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and is
sometimes required.

(For a modern parallel, see John Rawls' hypothetical situation, the original position.)
The second formulation

The second formulation (or Formula of the End in Itself) holds that "the rational being, as by its
nature an end and thus as an end in itself, must serve in every maxim as the condition restricting
all merely relative and arbitrary ends".[50] The principle dictates that you "[a]ct with reference to
every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim",
meaning that the rational being is "the basis of all maxims of action" and "must be treated never
as a mere means but as the supreme limiting condition in the use of all means, i.e., as an end at
the same time".[58]
The third formulation

The third formulation (Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two and is the basis for
the "complete determination of all maxims". It says "that all maxims which stem from
autonomous legislation ought to harmonize with a possible realm of ends as with a realm of
nature".[50] In principle, "So act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal
law (of all rational beings)", meaning that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as "a
member in the universal realm of ends", legislating universal laws through our maxims (that is, a
code of conduct), in a "possible realm of ends".[59] None may elevate themselves above the
universal law, therefore it is one's duty to follow the maxim(s).
Idea of God

Kant stated the practical necessity for a belief in God in his Critique of Practical Reason. As an
idea of pure reason, "we do not have the slightest ground to assume in an absolute manner ... the
object of this idea",[60] but adds that the idea of God cannot be separated from the relation of
happiness with morality as the "ideal of the supreme good". The foundation of this connection is
an intelligible moral world, and "is necessary from the practical point of view";[61] compare
Voltaire: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."[62] In the Jsche Logic
(1800) he wrote "One cannot provide objective reality for any theoretical idea, or prove it, except
for the idea of freedom, because this is the condition of the moral law, whose reality is an axiom.
The reality of the idea of God can only be proved by means of this idea, and hence only with a
practical purpose, i.e., to act as though (als ob) there is a God, and hence only for this purpose"
(9:93, trans. J. Michael Young, Lectures on Logic, p. 59091).
Along with this 'idea' on reason and God, Kant places thought over religion and nature[citation needed],
i.e. the idea of religion being natural or naturalistic. Kant saw reason as natural, and as some part
of Christianity is based on reason and morality, as Kant points out this is major in the scriptures,
it is inevitable that Christianity is 'natural'. However, it is not 'naturalistic' in the sense that the
religion does include supernatural or transcendent belief. Aside from this, a key point is that Kant
saw that the Bible should be seen as a source of natural morality no matter whether there is/was
any truth behind the supernatural factor, meaning that it is not necessary to know whether the
supernatural part of Christianity has any truth to abide by and use the core Christian moral code.

Kant articulates in Book Four some of his strongest criticisms of the organization and practices
of religious organizations that encourage what he sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God.
Among the major targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a hierarchical church
order. He sees all of these as efforts to make oneself pleasing to God in ways other than
conscientious adherence to the principle of moral rightness in the choice of one's actions. The
severity of Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his rejection of the possibility of
theoretical proofs for the existence of God and his philosophical re-interpretation of some basic
Christian doctrines, have provided the basis for interpretations that see Kant as thoroughly
hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967).Nevertheless, other
interpreters consider that Kant was trying to mark off a defensible rational core of Christian
belief.[63] Kant sees in Jesus Christ the affirmation of a "pure moral disposition of the heart" that
"can make man well-pleasing to God".[64]
Kant had exposure to Islam as well and reflected about the role of reason therein.[65]
Idea of freedom

In the Critique of Pure Reason,[66] Kant distinguishes between the transcendental idea of
freedom, which as a psychological concept is "mainly empirical" and refers to "the question
whether we must admit a power of spontaneously beginning a series of successive things or
states" as a real ground of necessity in regard to causality,[67] and the practical concept of freedom
as the independence of our will from the "coercion" or "necessitation through sensuous
impulses". Kant finds it a source of difficulty that the practical concept of freedom is founded on
the transcendental idea of freedom,[68] but for the sake of practical interests uses the practical
meaning, taking "no account of... its transcendental meaning," which he feels was properly
"disposed of" in the Third Antinomy, and as an element in the question of the freedom of the will
is for philosophy "a real stumbling-block" that has "embarrassed speculative reason".[67]
Kant calls practical "everything that is possible through freedom", and the pure practical laws
that are never given through sensuous conditions but are held analogously with the universal law
of causality are moral laws. Reason can give us only the "pragmatic laws of free action through
the senses", but pure practical laws given by reason a priori[69] dictate "what ought to be done".[70]
[71]

The categories of freedom

In the Critique of Practical Reason, at the end of the second Main Part of the Analytics,[72] Kant
introduces, in analogy with the categories of understanding their practical counterparts, the
categories of freedom. Kants categories of freedom appear to have primarily three functions: as
conditions of the possibility for actions (i) to be free, (ii) to be comprehensible as free and (iii) to
be morally evaluated. For Kant actions, although qua theoretical objects they are always already
constituted by means of the theoretical categories, qua practical objects (objects of reason in its

practical use, i.e. objects qua possibly good or bad) they are constituted by means of the
categories of freedom; and it is only in this way that actions, qua phenomena, can be a
consequence of freedom, and can be understood and evaluated as such.[73]
Aesthetic philosophy

Kant discusses the subjective nature of aesthetic qualities and experiences in Observations on the
Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, (1764). Kant's contribution to aesthetic theory is developed
in the Critique of Judgment (1790) where he investigates the possibility and logical status of
"judgments of taste." In the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," the first major division of the
Critique of Judgment, Kant used the term "aesthetic" in a manner that, according to Kant scholar
W.H. Walsh, differs from its modern sense.[74] Prior to this, in the Critique of Pure Reason, to
note essential differences between judgments of taste, moral judgments, and scientific
judgments, Kant abandoned the term "aesthetic" as "designating the critique of taste," noting that
judgments of taste could never be "directed" by "laws a priori".[75] After A. G. Baumgarten, who
wrote Aesthetica (175058),[76] Kant was one of the first philosophers to develop and integrate
aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive philosophical system, utilizing ideas that
played an integral role throughout his philosophy.[77]
In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" of the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is
not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the
pleasure that attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding. Even though it
appears that we are using reason to decide what beautiful, the judgment is not a cognitive
judgment,[78] "and is consequently not logical, but aesthetical" ( 1). A pure judgement of taste is
in fact subjective insofar as it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon
nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure
judgements of taste, i.e. judgements of beauty, lay claim to universal validity (2022). It is
important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty
but from common sense [source?]. Kant also believed that a judgement of taste shares
characteristics engaged in a moral judgement: both are disinterested, and we hold them to be
universal. In the chapter "Analytic of the Sublime" Kant identifies the sublime as an aesthetic
quality that, like beauty, is subjective, but unlike beauty refers to an indeterminate relationship
between the faculties of the imagination and of reason, and shares the character of moral
judgments in the use of reason. The feeling of the sublime, itself officially divided into two
distinct modes (the mathematical and the dynamical sublime), describes two subjective
moments, both of which concern the relationship of the faculty of the imagination to reason.
Some commentators,[79] however, argue that Kant's critical philosophy contains a third kind of the
sublime, the moral sublime, which is the aesthetic response to the moral law or a representation
thereof, and a development of the "noble" sublime in Kant's theory of 1764. The mathematical
sublime is situated in the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear
boundless and formless, or appear "absolutely great" ( 2325). This imaginative failure is then

recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In this
move the faculty of reason proves itself superior to our fallible sensible self ( 2526). In the
dynamical sublime there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries
to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of
reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral
vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop
moral character.
Kant had developed the distinction between an object of art as a material value subject to the
conventions of society and the transcendental condition of the judgment of taste as a "refined"
value in the propositions of his Idea of A Universal History (1784). In the Fourth and Fifth
Theses of that work he identified all art as the "fruits of unsociableness" due to men's
"antagonism in society",[80] and in the Seventh Thesis asserted that while such material property
is indicative of a civilized state, only the ideal of morality and the universalization of refined
value through the improvement of the mind of man "belongs to culture".[81]
Political philosophy
Main article: Political philosophy of Immanuel Kant

In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch[82] Kant listed several conditions that he thought
necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional
republics.[83] His classical republican theory was extended in the Science of Right', the first part
of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).[84]
"Kant's political teaching may be summarized in a phrase: republican government and
international organization. In more characteristically Kantian terms, it is doctrine of the state
based upon the law (Rechtsstaat) and of eternal peace. Indeed, in each of these formulations,
both terms express the same idea: that of legal constitution or of "peace through law." ... Taken
simply by itself, Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doctrine, rejects by
definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate
foundations for social life. The state is defined as the union of men under law. The state rightly
so called is constituted by laws which are necessary a priori because they flow from the very
concept of law. A regime can be judged by no other criteria nor be assigned any other functions,
than those proper to the lawful order as such." [85]
He opposed "democracy," which at his time meant direct democracy, believing that majority rule
posed a threat to individual liberty. He stated, "...democracy is, properly speaking, necessarily a
despotism, because it establishes an executive power in which 'all' decide for or even against one
who does not agree; that is, 'all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a contradiction of the
general will with itself and with freedom."[86] As with most writers at the time, he distinguished

three forms of government i.e. democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy with mixed government as
the most ideal form of it.
Anthropology

Kant lectured on anthropology for over 25 years. His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's doctoral dissertation.)
Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German.[87] The
former was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of
Philosophy series in 2006.[88]
Influence

Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound.[89] Over and above his influence on
specific thinkers, Kant changed the framework within which philosophical inquiry has been
carried out. He accomplished a paradigm shift: very little philosophy is now carried out in the
style of pre-Kantian philosophy. This shift consists in several closely related innovations that
have become axiomatic, in philosophy itself and in the social sciences and humanities generally:

Kant's "Copernican revolution", that placed the role of the human subject or
knower at the center of inquiry into our knowledge, such that it is impossible
to philosophize about things as they are independently of us or of how they
are for us;[90]

His invention of critical philosophy, that is of the notion of being able to

discover and systematically explore possible inherent limits to our ability to
know through philosophical reasoning

His creation of the concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of

"the conditions of possible experience" that is that things, knowledge, and
forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so
that, to understand or to know them, we must first understand these
conditions

His theory that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by

the functioning of the human mind

His notion of moral autonomy as central to humanity

His assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends
rather than as means

Some or all of these Kantian ideas can be seen in schools of thought as different from one
another as German Idealism, Marxism, positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, critical
theory, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism.[91][dubious
discuss]

Historical influence

Statue of Immanuel Kant in Kaliningrad (Knigsberg), Russia

During his own life, there was much critical attention paid to his thought. He did have a positive
influence on Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The
school of thinking known as German Idealism developed from his writings. The German
Idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden
notions like "the Absolute," "God," or "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought.[92] In so
doing, the German Idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot
observe.
Hegel was one of his first major critics. In response to what he saw as Kant's abstract and formal
account, Hegel brought about an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community.[93] But
Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, Kantian ethics. And
Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires," by
means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of
Kant's most basic concerns.[94]
Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain to challenge the decline in religious faith in the
nineteenth century. British Catholic writers, notably G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc,
followed this approach. Ronald Englefield debated this movement, and Kant's use of language.
See Ronald Englefield's article,[95] reprinted in Englefield[96] Criticisms of Kant were common in
the realist views of the new positivism at that time.

Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism. He, like G. E.
Schulze, Jacobi and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Things
in themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe nor are they completely
beyond our access. Ever since the first Critique of Pure Reason philosophers have been critical
of Kant's theory of the thing in itself. Many have argued, if such a thing exists beyond experience
then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category
'causality' beyond the realm of experience. For a review of this problem and the relevant
literature see The Thing in Itself and the Problem of Affection in the revised edition of Henry
Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism. For Schopenhauer things in themselves do not exist
outside the non-rational will. The world, as Schopenhauer would have it, is the striving and
largely unconscious will.
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though
there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the
publication of Kant und die Epigonen in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant",
and a re-examination of his ideas began (See Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th
century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg
School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer,[97] and antiNeo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.[98]
Kant's notion of "Critique" or criticism has been quite influential. The Early German Romantics,
especially Friedrich Schlegel in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's self-reflexive
conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry.[99] Also in Aesthetics, Clement
Greenberg, in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg
refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of Abstract painting, a movement
Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitiatonflatnessthat makes up the medium of painting.
[100]
French philosopher Michel Foucault was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of
"Critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of
"critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of
modernity, rooted in Kant".[101]
Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, which means
they are necessary and universal, yet known through intuition.[102] Kant's often brief remarks
about mathematics influenced the mathematical school known as intuitionism, a movement in
philosophy of mathematics opposed to Hilbert's formalism, and the logicism of Frege and
Bertrand Russell.[103]
Influence on modern thinkers

West German postage stamp, 1974, commemorating the 250th anniversary of

Kant's birth.

With his Perpetual Peace, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have
come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science.[104]
The Kantian paradigm shift in philosophy and metaphysics has been sustained. Some British and
American philosophers trace their intellectual origins to Hume:[105] however, Kant acknowledged
Hume as awakening him from his 'dogmatic slumbers', and his work articulated and clarified the
issues looked at by Hume.[106] (See The silent decade section, above).
Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosopher P. F. Strawson,[107] the American
philosophers Wilfrid Sellars[108] and Christine Korsgaard.[109]
Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in
Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in philosophy of psychology and cognitive
science is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.[110]
Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical
physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development.[111]
Jrgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose
work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy.[112] They have each argued against
relativism,[113] supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral
philosophy.

Kant's influence also has extended to the social and behavioral sciences, as in the sociology of
Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget, and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. Because of
the thoroughness of the Kantian paradigm shift, his influence extends to thinkers who neither
specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology.
Scholars have shown that Kant's critical ethos has also inspired nonwestern political thinkers,
including the Muslim political reformer Tariq Ramadan.[114]
Tomb and statue

Immanuel Kant's tomb today

5 DM 1974 D silver coin commemorating the 250th birthday of Immanuel Kant in

Knigsberg

Kant's tomb is today in a mausoleum adjoining the northeast corner of Knigsberg Cathedral in
what is now known as Kaliningrad, Russia. The mausoleum was constructed by the architect
Friedrich Lahrs and was finished in 1924 in time for the bicentenary of Kant's birth. Originally,
Kant was buried inside the cathedral, but in 1880 his remains were moved outside and placed in
a neo-Gothic chapel adjoining the northeast corner of the cathedral. Over the years, the chapel
became dilapidated before it was demolished to make way for the mausoleum, which was built
on the same spot, where it is today.

The tomb and its mausoleum are some of the few artifacts of German times preserved by the
Soviets after they conquered and annexed the city. Today, many newlyweds bring flowers to the
mausoleum.
Artifacts previously owned by Kant, known as Kantiana, were included in the Knigsberg City
Museum. However, the museum was destroyed during World War II.
A replica of the statue of Kant that stood in German times in front of the main University of
Knigsberg building was donated by a German entity in the early 1990s and placed in the same
grounds.
After the expulsion of Knigsberg's German population at the end of World War II, the historical
University of Knigsberg where Kant taught was replaced by the Russian-speaking Kaliningrad
State University, which took up the campus and surviving buildings of the historic German
university. In 2005, that Russian-speaking university was renamed Immanuel Kant State
University of Russia in honour of Kant. The change of name was announced at a ceremony
attended by President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Chancellor Gerhard Schrder of Germany,
and the university further formed a Kant Society, dedicated to the study of Kantianism.
List of works

(1746) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Vital Forces (Gedanken von der
wahren Schtzung der lebendigen Krfte)

(1755) A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition

(Neue Erhellung der ersten Grundstze metaphysischer Erkenntnisse;
Doctoral Thesis: Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova
dilucidatio)

(1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (Allgemeine

Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels)

(1756) Monadologia Physica

(1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche
Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)

(1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the

Existence of God (Der einzig mgliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration
des Daseins Gottes)

(1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into

Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Gren in die Weltweisheit
einzufhren)

(1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime

(Beobachtungen ber das Gefhl des Schnen und Erhabenen)

(1764) Essay on the Illness of the Head (ber die Krankheit des Kopfes)

(1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural

Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen ber die
Deutlichkeit der Grundstze der natrlichen Theologie und der Moral)

(1766) Dreams of a Spirit Seer (On Emmanuel Swedenborg) (Trume eines

Geistersehers)

(1770) Inaugural Dissertation (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et

principiis)

(1775) On the Different Races of Man (ber die verschiedenen Rassen der
Menschen)

(1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason[115] (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft)[116]

(1783) "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics"[117] (Prolegomena zu einer

jeden knftigen Metaphysik)

(1784) "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (Beantwortung

der Frage: Was ist Aufklrung?)[118]

(1784) "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (Idee zu

einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbrgerlicher Absicht)

(1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur

Metaphysik der Sitten)

(1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische

Anfangsgrnde der Naturwissenschaft)

(1786) Conjectural Beginning of Human History

(1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason[119] (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft)[120]

(1788) Critique of Practical Reason[121] (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft)[122]

(1790) Critique of Judgement (Kritik der Urteilskraft)[123]

(1790) The Science of Right[124]

(1793) Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Die Religion innerhalb der
Grenzen der bloen Vernunft)[125]

(1793) On the Old Saw: That may be right in theory, but it won't work in
practice (ber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt
aber nicht fr die Praxis)

(1795) Perpetual Peace[126] (Zum ewigen Frieden)[127]

(1796-7) The Metaphysics of Ethics. Translated with an introd. and appendix

by J.W. Semple (1836) online text in English

(1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten)

(1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in

pragmatischer Hinsicht)

(1798) The Contest of Faculties[128] (Der Streit der Fakultten)[129]

(1800) Logic (Logik)

(1803) On Pedagogy (ber Pdagogik)[130]

(1804) Opus Postumum

(1817) Lectures on Philosophical Theology (Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen

ber die philosophische Religionslehre edited by K. H. L. Plitz). [The English
edition of A. W. Wood & G. M. Clark (Cornell, 1978) is based on Plitz' second
edition, 1830, of these lectures.][131]

Utilitarianism
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This article discusses utilitarian ethical theory. For a discussion of John Stuart Mill's
book Utilitarianism, see Utilitarianism (book). For the architectural theory, see
Utilitarianism (architecture)
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Utilitarianism is a theory in normative ethics holding that the proper course of action is the one
that maximizes utility, usually defined as maximizing happiness and reducing suffering. Classic
utilitarianism, as advocated by two influential contributors, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart
Mill, is hedonistic.[1] It is now generally taken to be a form of consequentialism, although when
Anscombe first introduced that term it was to distinguish between "old-fashioned Utilitarianism"
and consequentialism.[2] According to utilitarianism the moral worth of an action is determined
only by its resulting outcome, although there is debate over how much consideration should be
given to actual consequences, foreseen consequences and intended consequences. In A Fragment
on Government, Bentham says, "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the

measure of right and wrong"[3] and describes this as a fundamental axiom. In An Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation, he talks of "the principle of utility" but later prefers
"the greatest happiness principle."[4][5]
Utilitarianism can be characterized as a quantitative and reductionist approach to ethics. It is a
type of naturalism.[6] It can be contrasted with deontological ethics,[7] which does not regard the
consequences of an act as a determinant of its moral worth; virtue ethics,[8] which primarily
focuses on acts and habits leading to happiness; pragmatic ethics; as well as with ethical egoism
and other varieties of consequentialism.[9]
Utilitarianism has been considered by some to be the natural ethic of a democracy operating by
simple majority without protection of individual rights,[10] even though protecting individual
rights would maximize happiness, thus it falls under the scope of Utilitarianism to protect those
rights.
Contents

1 Historical background

2 Classical utilitarianism

2.1 Jeremy Bentham

2.2 John Stuart Mill

2.2.1 Higher and lower pleasures

2.2.2 Mill's 'proof' of the principle of utility

3 Twentieth century developments

o

3.1 Ideal Utilitarianism

3.2 Act and rule utilitarianism

3.3 Two-level Utilitarianism

3.4 Preference utilitarianism

4 More varieties of utilitarianism

o

4.1 Negative utilitarianism

4.2 Motive utilitarianism

5 Criticisms
o

5.1 Ignores justice

5.2 Calculating utility is self-defeating

5.3 Predicting consequences

5.4 It is too demanding

5.5 Aggregating utility

5.6 Individual criticisms

5.6.1 Karl Marx's criticisms

5.6.2 John Taurek's criticism

5.6.3 John Paul II's personalist criticism

6 Additional considerations
o

6.1 Average v. total happiness

6.2 Motives, intentions and actions

7 Application to specific issues

o

7.1 Animals

7.2 Future generations

7.3 Human rights

8 See also

9 Notes

10 References

11 Further reading

12 External links

Historical background
See also: Hedonism

The importance of happiness as an end for humans has long been recognized. Forms of hedonism
were put forward by Aristippus and Epicurus; Aristotle argued that eudaimonia is the highest
human good and Augustine wrote that "all men agree in desiring the last end, which is
happiness." Happiness was also explored in depth by Aquinas.[11][12][13][14][15]. Different varieties of
consequentialism also existed in the ancient and medieval world, like the state consequentialism
of Mohism or the political philosophy of Niccol Machiavelli. Mohist consequentialism
advocated communitarian moral goods including political stability, population growth, and
wealth, but did not support the utilitarian notion of maximizing individual happiness.[16]
Machiavelli was also an exponent of consequentialism. He believed that the actions of a state,
however cruel or ruthless they may be, must contribute towards the common good of a society.[17]
Utilitarianism as a distinct ethical position only emerged in the eighteenth century.
Although utilitarianism is usually thought to start with Jeremy Bentham, there were earlier
writers who presented theories that were strikingly similar. In An Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals, David Hume writes:
In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever
principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or
common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any
means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side,
the true interests of mankind.[18]

Hume had studied under Francis Hutcheson, and it was he who first introduced a key utilitarian
phrase. In An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Hutcheson
writes:
In comparing the moral qualitys of actions, in order to regulate our election
among various actions proposed, or to find which of them has the greatest
moral excellency, we are led by our moral sense of virtue to judge thus; that
in equal degrees of happiness, expected to proceed from the action, the
virtue is in proportion to the number of persons to whom the happiness shall
extend (and here the dignity, or moral importance of persons, may
compensate numbers); and in equal numbers, the virtue is as the quantity of
the happiness, or natural good; or that the virtue is in a compound ratio of
the quantity of good, and number of enjoyers. In the same manner, the moral
evil, or vice, is as the degree of misery, and number of sufferers; so that, that
action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest
numbers; and that, worst, which, in like manner, occasions misery. [19]

In the first three editions of the book, Hutcheson followed this passage with various
mathematical algorithms "to compute the Morality of any Actions." In this, he pre-figured the
hedonic calculus of Bentham.

It is claimed[20] that the first systematic theory of utilitarian ethics was developed by John Gay. In
Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality (1731), Gay argues that
happiness, private happiness, is the proper or ultimate end of all our
actions each particular action may be said to have its proper and peculiar
end(but). they still tend or ought to tend to something farther; as is
evident from hence, viz. that a man may ask and expect a reason why either
of them are pursued: now to ask the reason of any action or pursuit, is only to
enquire into the end of it: but to expect a reason, i.e. an end, to be assigned
for an ultimate end, is absurd. To ask why I pursue happiness, will admit of no
other answer than an explanation of the terms. [21]

This pursuit of happiness is given a theological basis:

Now it is evident from the nature of God, viz. his being infinitely happy in
himself from all eternity, and from his goodness manifested in his works, that
he could have no other design in creating mankind than their happiness; and
therefore he wills their happiness; therefore the means of their happiness:
therefore that my behaviour, as far as it may be a means of the happiness of
mankind, should be suchthus the will of God is the immediate criterion of
Virtue, and the happiness of mankind the criterion of the wilt of God; and
therefore the happiness of mankind may be said to be the criterion of virtue,
but once removed(and) I am to do whatever lies in my power towards
promoting the happiness of mankind.[22]

Modern Utilitarianism by T. R. Birks 1874

Gay's theological utilitarianism was developed and popularized by William Paley. It has been
claimed that Paley was not a very original thinker and that the philosophical part of his treatise
on ethics is "an assemblage of ideas developed by others and is presented to be learned by
students rather than debated by colleagues."[23] Nevertheless, his book The Principles of Moral
and Political Philosophy (1785) was a required text at Cambridge[23] and Smith says that Paley's
writings were "once as well known in American colleges as were the readers and spellers of
William McGuffey and Noah Webster in the elementary schools."[24] Although now largely
missing from the philosophical canon, Schneewind writes that "utilitarianism first became
widely known in England through the work of William Paley."[25] The now forgotten significance
of Paley can be judged from the title of Birks's 1874 work Modern Utilitarianism or the Systems
of Paley, Bentham and Mill Examined and Compared.
Apart from restating that happiness as an end is grounded in the nature of God, Paley also
discusses the place of rules. He writes,
actions are to be estimated by their tendency. Whatever is expedient, is
right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone, which constitutes the obligation
of it.
But to all this there seems a plain objection, viz. that many actions are useful,
which no man in his senses will allow to be right. There are occasions, in
which the hand of the assassin would be very useful The true answer is
this; that these actions, after all, are not useful, and for that reason, and that
alone, are not right.
To see this point perfectly, it must be observed that the bad consequences of
actions are twofold, particular and general. The particular bad consequence
of an action, is the mischief which that single action directly and immediately
occasions. The general bad consequence is, the violation of some necessary
or useful general rule
You cannot permit one action and forbid another, without showing a
difference between them. Consequently, the same sort of actions must be
generally permitted or generally forbidden. Where, therefore, the general
permission of them would be pernicious, it becomes necessary to lay down
and support the rule which generally forbids them. [26]
Classical utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham.

Bentham's book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was printed in 1780
but not published until 1789. It is possible that Bentham was spurred on to publish after he saw
the success of Paleys The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy.[27] Bentham's book was
not an immediate success[28] but his ideas were spread further when Pierre tienne Louis Dumont
translated edited selections from a variety of Bentham's manuscripts into French. Trait de
legislation civile et pnale was published in 1802 and then later retranslated back into English by
Hildreth as The Theory of Legislation, although by this time significant portions of Dumonts
work had already been retranslated and incorporated into Sir John Bowring's edition of
Bentham's works, which was issued in parts between 1838 and 1843.
Bentham's work opens with a statement of the principle of utility,
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 By
the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves
of every action whatsoever according to the tendency it appears to have to
augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question:
or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or to oppose that
happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every
action of a private individual, but of every measure of government. [29]

In Chapter IV, Bentham introduces a method of calculating the value of pleasures and pains,
which has come to be known as the hedonic calculus. Bentham says that the value of a pleasure
or pain, considered by itself, can be measured according to its intensity, duration,

certainty/uncertainty and propinquity/remoteness. In addition, it is necessary to consider the

tendency of any act by which it is produced and, therefore, to take account of the acts
fecundity, or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind and its purity, or
the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind. Finally, it is necessary
to consider the extent, or the number of people affected by the action.
Perhaps aware that Hutcheson eventually removed his algorithms for calculating the greatest
happiness because they appeard useless, and were disagreeable to some readers[30] Bentham
contends that there is nothing novel or unwarranted about his method for in all this there is
nothing but what the practice of mankind, wheresoever they have a clear view of their own
interest, is perfectly conformable to.
Rosen warns that descriptions of utilitarianism can bear little resemblance historically to
utilitarians like Bentham and J. S. Mill and can be more a crude version of act utilitarianism
conceived in the twentieth century as a straw man to be attacked and rejected.[31] It is a mistake
to think that Bentham is not concerned with rules. His seminal work is concerned with the
principles of legislation and the hedonic calculus is introduced with the words Pleasures then,
and the avoidance of pains, are the ends that the legislator has in view. In Chapter VII Bentham
says, The business of government is to promote the happiness of the society, by punishing and
rewarding In proportion as an act tends to disturb that happiness, in proportion as the tendency
of it is pernicious, will be the demand it creates for punishment.
The question then arises as to when, if at all, it might legitimate to break the law. This is
considered in The Theory of Legislation where Bentham distinguishes between evils of the first
and second orders. Those of the first order are the more immediate consequences; those of the
second are when the consequences spread through the community causing alarm and danger.
It is true there are cases in which, if we confine ourselves to the effects of
the first order, the good will have an incontestable preponderance over the
evil. Were the offence considered only under this point of view, it would not
be easy to assign any good reasons to justify the rigour of the laws. Every
thing depends upon the evil of the second order; it is this which gives to such
actions the character of crime, and which makes punishment necessary. Let
us take, for example, the physical desire of satisfying hunger. Let a beggar,
pressed by hunger, steal from a rich man's house a loaf, which perhaps saves
him from starving, can it be possible to compare the good which the thief
acquires for himself, with the evil which the rich man suffers? It is not on
account of the evil of the first order that it is necessary to erect these actions
into offences, but on account of the evil of the second order. [32]
John Stuart Mill

Mill was brought up as a Benthamite with the explicit intention that would carry on the cause of
utilitarianism.[33] Mill's book Utilitarianism first appeared as a series of three articles published in
Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and was reprinted as a single book in 1863.
Higher and lower pleasures

Mill rejects a purely quantitative measurement of utility and says,

It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that
some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It
would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is
considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be
supposed to depend on quantity alone. [34]

Mill notes that, contrary to what its critics might say, there is no known Epicurean theory of life
which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect a much higher value as pleasures than to
those of mere sensation. However, he accepts that this is usually because the intellectual
pleasures are thought to have circumstantial advantages, i.e. greater permanency, safety,
uncostliness, &c. Instead, Mill will argue that some pleasures are intrinsically better than others.
The accusation that hedonism is doctrine worthy only of swine has a long history. In
Nicomachean Ethics (Book 1 Chapter 5) Aristotle says that identifying the good with pleasure is
to prefer a life suitable for beasts. The theological utilitarians had the option of grounding their
pursuit of happiness in the will of God; the hedonistic utilitarians needed a different defense.
Mills approach is to argue that the pleasures of the intellect are intrinsically superior to physical
pleasures.
"Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower
animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no
intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person
would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish
and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or
the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs A being of
higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of
more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than
one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really
wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence It is better
to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different
opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question " [35]

Mill argues that if people who are competently acquainted with two pleasures show a decided
preference for one even if it be accompanied by more discontent and would not resign it for any

quantity of the other then it is legitimate to regard that pleasure as being superior in quality. Mill
recognises that these competent judges will not always agree, in which case the judgment of the
majority is to be accepted as final. Mill also acknowledges that many who are capable of the
higher pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to the lower.
But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the higher.
Mill says that this appeal to those who have experienced the relevant pleasures is no different to
what must happen when assessing the quantity of pleasure for there is no other way of measuring
the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations.
Mill's 'proof' of the principle of utility

In Chapter Four of Utilitarianism Mill considers what proof can be given for the Principle of
Utility. He says
The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people
actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it...
In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that
anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it No reason can be
given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far
as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness we have not
only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to
require, that happiness is a good: that each person's happiness is a good to
that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of
all persons.[36]

It is usual[37] to say that Mill is committing a number of fallacies. He is accused of committing

the naturalistic fallacy, because he is trying to deduce what people ought to do from what they do
in fact do; the fallacy of equivocation, because he moves from the fact that something is
desirable(1), i.e. is capable of being desired, to the claim that it is desirable(2), i.e. that it ought to
be desired; and the fallacy of composition, because the fact that people desire their own
happiness does not imply that the aggregate of all persons will desire the general happiness.
Hall[38] and Popkin[39] defend Mill against this accusation pointing out that he begins Chapter
Four by asserting that questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term and that this is common to all first principles. According to Hall and
Popkin, therefore, Mill does not attempt to establish that what people do desire is desirable but
merely attempts to make the principles acceptable.[37] The type of proof Mill is offering
"consists only of some considerations which, Mill thought, might induce an honest and
reasonable man to accept utilitarianism."[37]
Having claimed that people do, in fact, desire happiness Mill now has to show that it is the only
thing they desire. Mill anticipates the objection that people desire other things such as virtue. He

argues that whilst people might start desiring virtue as a means to happiness, eventually, it
becomes part of someones happiness and is then desired as an end in itself.
"The principle of utility does not mean that any given pleasure, as music, for
instance, or any given exemption from pain, as for example health, are to be
looked upon as means to a collective something termed happiness, and to be
desired on that account. They are desired and desirable in and for
themselves; besides being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue,
according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the
end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it disinterestedly
it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to happiness,
but as a part of their happiness."[40]
Twentieth century developments
Ideal Utilitarianism

The description Ideal Utilitarianism was first used by Hastings Rashdall in The Theory of Good
and Evil (1907) but is more often associated with G. E. Moore. In Ethics (1912) Moore rejected a
purely hedonistic utilitarianism and argued that there is a range of values that might be
maximized. Moores strategy was to show that it is intuitively implausible that pleasure is the
sole measure of what is good. He says that such an assumption,
involves our saying, for instance, that a world in which absolutely nothing
except pleasure existedno knowledge, no love, no enjoyment of beauty, no
moral qualitiesmust yet be intrinsically betterbetter worth creating
provided only the total quantity of pleasure in it were the least bit greater,
than one in which all these things existed as well as pleasure.
It involves our saying that, even if the total quantity of pleasure in each was
exactly equal, yet the fact that all the beings in the one possessed in addition
knowledge of many different kinds and a full appreciation of all that was
beautiful or worthy of love in their world, whereas none of the beings in the
other possessed any of these things, would give us no reason whatever for
preferring the former to the latter. [41]

Moore admits that it is impossible to prove the case either way but believed that it was intuitively
obvious that even if the amount of pleasure stayed the same a world that contained such things as
beauty and love would be a better world. He adds that if anybody took the contrary view then I
think it is self-evident that he would be wrong.[41]
Act and rule utilitarianism

In the mid-twentieth century a number of philosophers focused on the place of rules in utilitarian
thinking.[42] It was already accepted that it is necessary to use rules to help you choose the right

action because the problems of calculating the consequences on each and every occasion would
almost certainly result in you frequently choosing something less than the best course of action.
Paley had justified the use of rules and Mill says,
It is truly a whimsical supposition that, if mankind were agreed in
considering utility to be the test of morality, they would remain without any
agreement as to what is useful, and would take no measures for having their
notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by law and
opinion to consider the rules of morality as improvable, is one thing; to pass
over the intermediate generalisations entirely, and endeavour to test each
individual action directly by the first principle, is another The proposition
that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road
ought to be laid down to that goal Nobody argues that the art of navigation
is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the
Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready
calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their
minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong. [43]

However, rule utilitarianism proposes a more central role for rules that was thought to rescue the
theory from some of its more devastating criticisms, particularly problems to do with justice and
promise keeping. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s articles were published both for and against
the new form of utilitarianism and through this debate the theory we now call rule utilitarianism
was created. In an introduction to an anthology of these articles the editor was able to say, The
development of this theory was a dialectical process of formulation, criticism, reply and
reformulation; the record of this process well illustrates the co-operative development of a
philosophical theory.[44]
Smart[45] and McCloskey[46] initially used the terms 'extreme' and 'restricted' utilitarianism but
eventually everyone settled on the terms 'act' and 'rule' utilitarianism.
The essential difference is in what determines whether or not an action is the right action. Act
utilitarianism maintains that an action is right if it maximises utility; rule utilitarianism maintains
that an action is right if it conforms to a rule that maximises utility.
In 1953 Urmson published an influential article[47] arguing that Mill justified rules on utilitarian
principles. From then on articles have debated this interpretation of Mill. In all probability it was
not a distinction that Mill was particularly trying to make and so the evidence in his writing is
inevitably mixed. A collection of Mills writing published in 1977 includes a letter in which he
says:
I agree with you that the right way of testing actions by their consequences,
is to test them by the natural consequences of the particular action, and not
by those which would follow if everyone did the same. But, for the most part,

the consideration of what would happen if everyone did the same, is the only
means we have of discovering the tendency of the act in the particular
case.[48]

This seems to tip the balance in favour of saying that Mill is best classified as an act utilitarian.
Some school level textbooks and at least one UK examination board[49] make a further distinction
between strong and weak rule utilitarianism. However, it is not clear that this distinction is made
in the academic literature.
It has been argued that rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism, because for any given
rule, in the case where breaking the rule produces more utility, the rule can be refined by the
addition of a sub-rule that handles cases like the exception.[50] This process holds for all cases of
exceptions, and so the rules have as many sub-rules as there are exceptional cases, which, in
the end, makes an agent seek out whatever outcome produces the maximum utility.[51]
Two-level Utilitarianism
Main article: Two-level utilitarianism

In Principles (1973)[52] R.M.Hare accepts that rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism
but claims that this is a result of allowing the rules to be 'as specific and un-general as we please.'
He argues that one of the main reasons for introducing rule utilitarianism was to do justice to the
general rules that people need for moral education and character development and he proposes
that a difference between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism can be introduced by limiting
the specificity of the rules, i.e., by increasing their generality.[53] This distinction between a
specific rule utilitarianism (which collapses into act utilitarianism) and general rule
utilitarianism forms the basis of Hares two-level utilitarianism.
When we are playing God or the ideal observer we use the specific form and we will need to do
this when we are deciding what general principles to teach and follow. When we are inculcating
or in situations where the biases of our human nature are likely to prevent us doing the
calculations properly, then we should use the more general rule utilitarianism.
Hare argues that in practice, most of the time, we should be following the general principles:
One ought to abide by the general principles whose general inculcation is for
the best; harm is more likely to come, in actual moral situations, from
questioning these rules than from sticking to them, unless the situations are
very extra-ordinary; the results of sophisticated felicific calculations are not
likely, human nature and human ignorance being what they are, to lead to
the greatest utility.[54]

In Moral Thinking (1981) Hare illustrated the two extremes. The 'archangel' is the hypothetical
person who has perfect knowledge of the situation and no personal biases or weaknesses and
always uses critical moral thinking to decide the right thing to do; the prole is the hypothetical
person who is completely incapable of critical thinking and uses nothing but intuitive moral
thinking and, of necessity, has to follow the general moral rules they have been taught or learned
through imitation.[55] It is not that some people are archangels and others proles but rather we all
share the characteristics of both to limited and varying degrees and at different times.[55]
Hare does not specify when we should think more like an 'archangel' and more like a 'prole' as
this will, in any case, vary from person to person. However, the critical moral thinking underpins
and informs the more intuitive moral thinking. It is responsible for formulating and, if necessary,
reformulating the general moral rules. We also switch to critical thinking when trying to deal
with unusual situations or in cases where the intuitive moral rules give conflicting advice.
Preference utilitarianism

Preference utilitarianism was first put forward in 1977 by John Harsanyi in Morality and the
theory of rational behaviour[56] but it is more commonly associated with R. M. Hare,[55] Peter
Singer[57] and Richard Brandt.[58]
Harsanyi claimed that his theory is indebted to Adam Smith, who equated the moral point of
view with that of an impartial but sympathetic observer; to Kant, who insisted on the criterion of
universality, which may also be described as a criterion of reciprocity; to the classical utilitarians
who made maximising social utility the basic criterion of morality; and to the modern theory of
rational behaviour under risk and uncertainty, usually described as Bayesian decision theory.[59]
Harsanyi rejects hedonistic utilitarianism as being dependent on an outdated psychology saying
that it is far from obvious that everything we do is motivated by a desire to maximise pleasure
and minimise pain. He also rejects ideal utilitarianism because it is certainly not true as an
empirical observation that peoples only purpose in life is to have mental states of intrinsic
worth.[60]
According to Harsanyi, preference utilitarianism is the only form of utilitarianism consistent
with the important philosophical principle of preference autonomy. By this I mean the principle
that, in deciding what is good and what is bad for a given individual, the ultimate criterion can
only be his own wants and his own preferences.[61]
Harsanyi adds two caveats. People sometimes have irrational preferences. To deal with this
Harsanyi distinguishes between manifest preferences and true preferences. The former are
those manifested by his observed behaviour, including preferences possibly based on erroneous
factual beliefs, or on careless logical analysis, or on strong emotions that at the moment greatly
hinder rational choice whereas the latter are the preferences he would have if he had all the

relevant factual information, always reasoned with the greatest possible care, and were in a state
of mind most conducive to rational choice.[61] It is the latter that preference utilitarianism tries to
satisfy.
The second caveat is that antisocial preferences such as sadism, envy and resentment have to be
excluded. Harsanyi achieves this by claiming that such preferences partially exclude those
people from the moral community.
Utilitarian ethics makes all of us members of the same moral community. A
person displaying ill will toward others does remain a member of this
community, but not with his whole personality. That part of his personality
that harbours these hostile antisocial feelings must be excluded from
membership, and has no claim for a hearing when it comes to defining our
concept of social utility.[62]
More varieties of utilitarianism
Negative utilitarianism

In The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), Karl Popper argued that the principle 'maximize
pleasure' should be replaced by 'minimize pain'. He thought "it is not only impossible but very
dangerous to attempt to maximize the pleasure or the happiness of the people, since such an
attempt must lead to totalitarianism."[63] He claimed that,
there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and
happiness, or between pain and pleasure In my opinion human suffering
makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no
similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. A
further criticism of the Utilitarian formula Maximize pleasure is that it
assumes a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of
pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain
cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one mans pain by
another mans pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest
number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable
suffering for all...[64]

The actual term negative utilitarianism was introduced by R.N.Smart as the title to his 1958
reply to Popper[65] in which he argued that the principle would entail seeking the quickest and
least painful method of killing the entirety of humanity.
Suppose that a ruler controls a weapon capable of instantly and painlessly
destroying the human race. Now it is empirically certain that there would be
some suffering before all those alive on any proposed destruction day were to

die in the natural course of events. Consequently the use of the weapon is
bound to diminish suffering, and would be the ruler's duty on NU grounds. [66]

Negative utilitarianism would seem to call for the destruction of the world even if only to avoid
the pain of a pinprick.[67]
It has been claimed[68] that negative preference utilitarianism avoids the problem of moral killing,
but still demands a justification for the creation of new lives. Others see negative utilitarianism
as a branch within classical utilitarianism, which assigns a higher weight to the avoidance of
suffering than to the promotion of happiness.[69] The moral weight of suffering can be increased
by using a "compassionate" utilitarian metric, so that the result is the same as in prioritarianism.
[70]

Motive utilitarianism

Motive utilitarianism was first proposed by Robert Adams in 1976.[71] Whereas act utilitarianism
requires us to choose our actions by calculating which action will maximize utility and rule
utilitarianism requires us to implement rules which will, on the whole, maximize utility, motive
utilitarianism has the utility calculus being used to select motives and dispositions according to
their general felicific effects, and those motives and dispositions then dictate our choices of
actions.[72]
The arguments for moving to some form of motive utilitarianism at the personal level can be
seen as mirroring the arguments for moving to some form of rule utilitarianism at the social
level.[73] Adams refers to Sidgwick's observation that Happiness (general as well as individual)
is likely to be better attained if the extent to which we set ourselves consciously to aim at it be
carefully restricted.[74] Trying to apply the utility calculation on each and every occasion is
likely to lead to a sub-optimal outcome. Applying carefully selected rules at the social level and
encouraging appropriate motives at the personal level is, so it is argued, likely to lead to a better
overall outcome even if on some individual occasions it leads to the wrong action when assessed
according to act utilitarian standards.
Adams illustrates his theory by telling a fictitious story about Jack, a lover of art, visiting
Chartres cathedral. Jack is motivated to see, as nearly as possible, everything in the cathedral.
However, there were some things in the cathedral that, on their own, didnt interest him much.
On act utilitarian grounds he should have ignored them. Spending more time in the cathedral
than he had originally planned resulted in him missing his dinner, doing several hours of night
driving, which he hates, and having trouble finding a place to sleep. Adams argues that Jack will
only have skipped the less interesting bits of the cathedral if he had been less interested in
seeing everything in the cathedral than in maximizing utility. And it is plausible to suppose that if
his motivation had been different in that respect, he would have enjoyed the cathedral much
less.[75]

Adams concludes that right action, by act-utilitarian standards, and right motivation, by motiveutilitarian standards, are incompatible in some cases.[76] The necessity of this conclusion is
rejected by Fred Feldman who argues that the conflict in question results from an inadequate
formulation of the utilitarian doctrines; motives play no essential role in it(and that)
Precisely the same sort of conflict arises even when MU is left out of consideration and AU is
applied by itself.[77] Instead, Feldman proposes a variant of act utilitarianism that results in there
being no conflict between it and motive utilitarianism.
Criticisms

Because utilitarianism is not a single theory but a cluster of related theories that have developed
over two hundred years, criticisms can be made for different reasons and have different targets. A
criticism of its hedonistic assumptions might be part of a rejection of utilitarianism as a whole or
a reason for moving to a different form of utilitarianism. A criticism made by one person for one
reason may be used later by someone else for a different reason.
Ignores justice

As Rosen[27] has pointed out, claiming that act utilitarians are not concerned about having rules is
to set up a "straw man". Similarly, Hare refers to "the crude caricature of act utilitarianism which
is the only version of it that many philosophers seem to be acquainted with."[78] Given what
Bentham says about second order evils[79] it would be a serious misrepresentation to say that he
and similar act utilitarians would be prepared to punish an innocent person for the greater good.
Nevertheless, whether they would agree or not, this is what critics of utilitarianism claim is
entailed by the theory. A classic version of this criticism was given by H. J. McCloskey:
Suppose that a sheriff were faced with the choice either of framing a Negro
for a rape that had aroused hostility to the Negroes (a particular Negro
generally being believed to be guilty but whom the sheriff knows not to be
guilty)and thus preventing serious anti-Negro riots which would probably
lead to some loss of life and increased hatred of each other by whites and
Negroesor of hunting for the guilty person and thereby allowing the antiNegro riots to occur, while doing the best he can to combat them. In such a
case the sheriff, if he were an extreme utilitarian, would appear to be
committed to framing the Negro.[80]

By "extreme" utilitarian, McCloskey is referring to what later came to be called "act"

utilitarianism. Whilst this story might be quoted as part of a justification for moving from act to
rule utilitarianism McCloskey anticipates this and points out that each rule has to be judged on its
utility and it is not at all obvious that a rule with exceptions has less utility. The above story
invites the reply that the sheriff would not frame the innocent because of the rule "do not punish
an innocent person". However, McCloskey asks, what about the rule punish an innocent person

when and only when to do so is not to weaken the existing institution of punishment and when
the consequences of doing so are valuable?
In a later article, McCloskey says:
"Surely the utilitarian must admit that whatever the facts of the matter may
be, it is logically possible that an 'unjust' system of punishmente.g. a
system involving collective punishments, retroactive laws and punishments,
or punishments of parents and relations of the offendermay be more useful
than a 'just' system of punishment?"[81]
Calculating utility is self-defeating

An early criticism, which was addressed by Mill, is that if time is taken to calculate the best
course of action it is likely that the opportunity to take the best course of action will already have
passed. Mill responds, that there has been ample time to calculate the likely effects,
...namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that
time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions;
on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are
dependentIt is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle
is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveller
respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of
landmarks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is
the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid
down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take
one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind
of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on
other matters of practical concernment.[82]

More recently, Hardin has made the same point. It should embarrass philosophers that they have
ever taken this objection seriously. Parallel considerations in other realms are dismissed with
eminently good sense. Lord Devlin notes, if the reasonable man worked to rule by perusing to
the point of comprehension every form he was handed, the commercial and administrative life of
the country would creep to a standstill.[83]
It is such considerations that lead even act utilitarians to rely on rules of thumb as Smart[84] has
called them. The objection arises when utilitarianism is mistakenly taken to be a decision-making
procedure rather than a criterion of what is right.
Predicting consequences

It has been argued that it is impossible to do the calculation that utilitarianism requires because
consequences are inherently unknowable. Daniel Dennett describes this as the Three Mile Island

effect.[85] Dennett points out that not only is it impossible to assign a precise utility value to the
incident, it is impossible to know whether, ultimately, the near-meltdown that occurred was a
good or bad thing. He suggests that it would have been a good thing if lessons had been learned
which would have prevented even more serious incidents from happening later.
Russel Hardin rejects such arguments. He argues that it is possible to distinguish the moral
impulse of utilitarianism, which is to define the right as good consequences and to motivate
people to achieve these from our ability to correctly apply rational principles which will among
other things depend on the perceived facts of the case and on the particular moral actors mental
equipment.[86] The fact that the latter is limited and can change doesn't mean that the former has
to be rejected. "If we develop a better system for determining relevant causal relations so that we
are able to choose actions that better produce our intended ends, it does not follow that we then
must change our ethics. The moral impulse of utilitarianism is constant, but our decisions under
it are contingent on our knowledge and scientific understanding."[83]
From the beginning, utilitarianism has recognized that certainty in such matters is unobtainable
and both Bentham and Mill said that it was necessary to rely on the tendencies of actions to bring
about consequences. G. E. Moore writing in 1903 said,
We certainly cannot hope directly to compare their effects except within a
limited future; and all the arguments, which have ever been used in Ethics,
and upon which we commonly act in common life, directed to shewing that
one course is superior to another, are (apart from theological dogmas)
confined to pointing out such probable immediate advantages
An ethical law has the nature not of a scientific law but of a scientific
prediction: and the latter is always merely probable, although the probability
may be very great.[87]
It is too demanding

Act utilitarianism not only requires everyone to do what they can to maximize utility but to do so
without any favouritism. Mill says, "As between his own happiness and that of others,
utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent
spectator."[82] Critics say that this combination of requirements leads to utilitarianism making
unreasonable demands. The well-being of strangers counts just as much as that of friends, family
or self. What makes this requirement so demanding is the gargantuan number of strangers in
great need of help and the indefinitely many opportunities to make sacrifices to help them."[88] As
Shelly Kagan says, Given the parameters of the actual world, there is no question that
(maximally) promoting the good would require a life of hardship, self-denial, and austeritya
life spent promoting the good would be a severe one indeed.[89]

Hooker describes two aspects to the problem: act utilitarianism requires huge sacrifices from
those who are relatively better off and also requires sacrifice of your own good even when the
aggregate good will be only slightly increased.[90] Another way of highlighting the complaint is to
say that in utilitarianism, "there is no such thing as morally permissible self-sacrifice that goes
above and beyond the call of duty."[90] Mill was quite clear about this, A sacrifice which does
not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.[82]
One response to the problem is to accept its demands. This is the view taken by Peter Singer who
says, No doubt we do instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by
and watch a child drown; many can ignore the avoidable deaths of children in Africa or India.
The question, however, is not what we usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to
see any sound moral justification for the view that distance, or community membership, makes a
crucial difference to our obligations."[91]
Others argue that a moral theory that is so contrary to our deeply held moral convictions must
either be rejected or modified.[92] There have been various attempts to modify utilitarianism to
escape its seemingly over-demanding requirements.[93] One approach is to drop the demand that
utility be maximized. In Satisficing Consequentialism Michael Slote argues for a form of
utilitarianism where an act might qualify as morally right through having good enough
consequences, even though better consequences could have been produced.[94] One advantage of
such a system is that it would be able to accommodate the notion of supererogatory actions.
Samuel Scheffler takes a different approach and amends the requirement that everyone be treated
the same.[95] In particular, Scheffler suggests that there is an agent-centered prerogative such
that when the overall utility is being calculated it is permitted to count our own interests more
heavily than the interests of others. Kagan suggests that such a procedure might be justified on
the grounds that, a general requirement to promote the good would lack the motivational
underpinning necessary for genuine moral requirements and, secondly, that personal
independence is necessary for the existence of commitments and close personal relations and that
the value of such commitments yields a positive reason for preserving within moral theory at
least some moral independence for the personal point of view.[96]
Robert Goodin takes yet another approach and argues that the demandingness objection can be
blunted by treating utilitarianism as a guide to public policy rather than one of individual
morality. He suggests that many of the problems arise under the traditional formulation because
the conscientious utilitarian ends up having to make up for the failings of others and so
contributing more than their fair share.[97]
Harsanyi argues that the objection overlooks the fact that people attach considerable utility to
freedom from unduly burdensome moral obligations most people will prefer a society with a
more relaxed moral code, and will feel that such a society will achieve a higher level of average

utilityeven if adoption of such a moral code should lead to some losses in economic and
cultural accomplishments (so long as these losses remain within tolerable limits). This means
that utilitarianism, if correctly interpreted, will yield a moral code with a standard of acceptable
conduct very much below the level of highest moral perfection, leaving plenty of scope for
supererogatory actions exceeding this minimum standard.[98]
Aggregating utility

The objection that utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons[99]
came to prominence in 1971 with the publication of John Rawls A Theory of Justice. The
concept is also important in Animal rights advocate Richard Ryders rejection of utilitarianism in
which he talks of the boundary of the individual, through which neither pain nor pleasure may
pass.[100] However, a similar objection was noted by Thomas Nagel in 1970 who claimed that
consequentialism treats the desires, needs, satisfactions, and dissatisfactions of distinct persons
as if they were the desires, etc., of a mass person.[101] and even earlier by David Gauthier who
wrote that utilitarianism supposes that mankind is a super-person, whose greatest satisfaction is
the objective of moral action. . . . But this is absurd. Individuals have wants, not mankind;
individuals seek satisfaction, not mankind. A persons satisfaction is not part of any greater
satisfaction.[102] Thus the aggregation of utility becomes futile as both pain and happiness are
intrinsic to and inseparable from the consciousness in which they are felt, rendering impossible
the task of adding up the various pleasures of multiple individuals.
A response to this criticism is to point out that whilst seeming to resolve some problems it
introduces others. Intuitively, there are many cases where people do want to take the numbers
involved into account. As Alastair Norcross has said, suppose that Homer is faced with the
painful choice between saving Barney from a burning building or saving both Moe and Apu from
the buildingit is clearly better for Homer to save the larger number, precisely because it is a
larger number Can anyone who really considers the matter seriously honestly claim to believe
that it is worse that one person die than that the entire sentient population of the universe be
severely mutilated? Clearly not.[103]
Individual criticisms
Karl Marx's criticisms

Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, writes:

Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time a

movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first
the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condem

Marx's accusation is twofold. In the first place, he says that the theory of utility is true by
definition and thus does not really add anything meaningful. For Marx, a productive inquiry had
to investigate what sorts of things are good for peoplethat is, what our nature, alienated under
capitalism, really is. Second, he says that Bentham fails to take account of the changing character
of people, and hence the changing character of what is good for them. This criticism is especially
important for Marx, because he believed that all important statements were contingent upon
particular historical conditions.
Marx argues that human nature is dynamic, so the concept of a single utility for all humans is
one-dimensional and not useful. When he decries Bentham's application of the 'yard measure' of
now to 'the past, present and future', he decries the implication that society, and people, have
always been, and will always be, as they are now; that is, he criticizes essentialism. As he sees it,
this implication is conservatively used to reinforce institutions he regarded as reactionary. Just
because in this moment religion has some positive consequences, says Marx, doesn't mean that
viewed historically it isn't a regressive institution that should be abolished.
John Taurek's criticism

John Taurek has argued that the idea of adding happiness or pleasures across persons is quite
unintelligible and that the numbers of persons involved in a situation are morally irrelevant.[105]
Taurek asks whether "we should, in [certain] trade-off situations, consider the relative numbers
of people involved as something in itself of significance in determining our course of action[?]"
Taurek tells us that "The conclusion I reach is that we should not." Taurek's argument looks at a
trade off situation: "The situation is that I have a supply of some life-saving drug. Six people will
all certainly die if they are not treated with the drug. But one of the six requires all of the drug if
he is to survive. Each of the other five requires only one-fifth of the drug. What ought I to do?"
Taurek's basic concern comes down to there being no way to explain what the meaning is of
saying that things would be five times worse if the five died than if the one died. "I cannot give a
satisfactory account of the meaning of judgments of this kind," he writes (p. 304). He argues that
the six persons in this situation, if considered equal in all other respects, should all be given an
equal chance of surviving: "I am inclined to treat each person equally by giving each an equal
chance to survive." (P. 306.) Each person in the situation can only lose one person's happiness or
pleasures. There isn't five times more loss of happiness or pleasure when five die: who would be
feeling this happiness or pleasure? "Each person's potential loss has the same significance to me,
only as a loss to that person alone. because, by hypothesis, I have an equal concern for each
person involved, I am moved to give each of them an equal chance to be spared his loss." (P.
307.) The basic concern here is cogent: while one can understand why more pain or sadness is
worse for an individual subject since someone experiences that greater pain or sorrow. But in
virtue of what should we take five people's pain or sorrow (all else being equal) as worse if no
single person experiences that pain or sorrow? Parfit[106] and others[107] have criticized Taurek's
line, but it remains worth considering and continues to be discussed.[108]

John Paul II's personalist criticism

Pope John Paul II, following his personalist philosophy, considered that a danger of
utilitarianism is that it tends to make persons, just as much as things, the object of use.
"Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of things and not of
persons, a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used."[109]
Additional considerations
Average v. total happiness
Main article: Average and total utilitarianism

In The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick asked, "Is it total or average happiness that we seek
to make a maximum?"[110] He noted that aspects of the question had been overlooked and
answered the question himself by saying that what had to be maximized was the average
multiplied by the number of people living.[111] He also argued that if the average happiness
enjoyed remains undiminished, Utilitarianism directs us to make the number enjoying it as great
as possible.[111] This was also the view taken earlier by Paley. He notes that although he speaks
of the happiness of communities, the happiness of a people is made up of the happiness of
single persons; and the quantity of happiness can only be augmented by increasing the number of
the percipients, or the pleasure of their perceptions and that if extreme cases, such a people held
as slaves, are excluded the amount of happiness will usually be in proportion to the number of
people. Consequently, the decay of population is the greatest evil that a state can suffer; and the
improvement of it the object which ought, in all countries, to be aimed at in preference to every
other political purpose whatsoever.[112] More recently a similar view has been expressed by
Smart who argued that all other things being equal a universe with two million happy people is
better than a universe with only one million happy people.[113]
Since Sidgwick raised the question it has been studied in detail and philosophers have argued
that using either total or average happiness can lead to objectionable results.
According to Derek Parfit, using total happiness falls victim to the Repugnant Conclusion,
whereby large numbers of people with very low but non-negative utility values can be seen as a
better goal than a population of a less extreme size living in comfort. In other words, according
to the theory, it is a moral good to breed more people on the world for as long as total happiness
rises.[114]
On the other hand, measuring the utility of a population based on the average utility of that
population avoids Parfit's repugnant conclusion but causes other problems. For example,
bringing a moderately happy person into a very happy world would be seen as an immoral act;
aside from this, the theory implies that it would be a moral good to eliminate all people whose
happiness is below average, as this would raise the average happiness.[115]

William Shaw suggests that the problem can be avoided if a distinction is made between
potential people, who need not concern us, and actual future people, who should concern us. He
says, utilitarianism values the happiness of people, not the production of units of happiness.
Accordingly, one has no positive obligation to have children. However, if you have decided to
have a child, then you have an obligation to give birth to the happiest child you can.[116]
Motives, intentions and actions

Utilitarianism is typically taken to assess the rightness or wrongness of an action by considering

just the consequences of that action. Bentham very carefully distinguishes motive from intention
and says that motives are not in themselves good or bad but can be referred to as such on account
of their tendency to produce pleasure or pain. He adds that from every kind of motive, may
proceed actions that are good, others that are bad, and others that are indifferent.[117] Mill makes
a similar point[118] and explicitly says that motive has nothing to do with the morality of the
action, though much with the worth of the agent. He who saves a fellow creature from drowning
does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his
trouble.[119]
However, with intention the situation is more complex. In a footnote printed in the second
edition of Utilitarianism, Mill says, the morality of the action depends entirely upon the
intentionthat is, upon what the agent wills to do.[119] Elsewhere, he says, Intention, and
motive, are two very different things. But it is the intention, that is, the foresight of
consequences, which constitutes the moral rightness or wrongness of the act.[120]
The correct interpretation of Mills footnote is a matter of some debate. The difficulty in
interpretation centres around trying to explain why, since it is consequences that matter,
intentions should play a role in the assessment of the morality of an action but motives should
not. One possibility involves supposing that the 'morality' of the act is one thing, probably to do
with the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of the agent, and its rightness or wrongness
another.[121] Jonathan Dancy rejects this interpretation on the grounds that Mill is explicitly
making intention relevant to an assessment of the act not to an assessment of the agent.
An interpretation given by Roger Crisp draws on a definition given by Mill in A System of Logic
where he says an intention to produce the effect, is one thing; the effect produced in
consequence of the intention, is another thing; the two together constitute the action.[122]
Accordingly, whilst two actions may outwardly appear to be the same they will be different
actions if there is a different intention. Dancy notes that this does not explain why intentions
count but motives do not.
A third interpretation is that an action might be considered a complex action consisting of several
stages and it is the intention that determines which of these stages are to be considered part of the
action. Although this is the interpretation favoured by Dancy, he recognizes that this might not

have been Mills own view for Mill would not even allow that 'p & q' expresses a complex
proposition. He wrote in his System of Logic I iv. 3, of 'Caesar is dead and Brutus is alive', that
'we might as well call a street a complex house, as these two propositions a complex
proposition'.[121]
Finally, whilst motives may not play a role in determining the morality of an action this does not
preclude utilitarians from fostering particular motives if doing so will increase overall happiness.
Application to specific issues
Animals
Further information: Speciesism, animal welfare

Peter Singer

In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Bentham wrote "the question is
not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"[123] Mill's distinction between
higher and lower pleasures might suggest that he gave more status to humans but in The Methods
of Ethics, philosopher Henry Sidgwick says "We have next to consider who the "all" are, whose
happiness is to be taken into account. Are we to extend our concern to all the beings capable of
pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our conduct? or are we to confine our view to
human happiness? The former view is the one adopted by Bentham and Mill, and (I believe) by
the Utilitarian school generally: and is obviously most in accordance with the universality that is
characteristic of their principle...it seems arbitrary and unreasonable to exclude from the end, as
so conceived, any pleasure of any sentient being."[124]
Peter Singer, along with many animal rights activists, have continued to argue that the well-being
of all sentient beings ought to be seriously considered. Singer suggests that rights are conferred

according to the level of a creature's self-awareness, regardless of their species. He adds that
humans tend to be speciesist (discriminatory against non-humans) in ethical matters.
In his 1990 edition of Animal Liberation, Peter Singer said that he no longer ate oysters and
mussels, because although the creatures might not suffer, they might, its not really known, and
its easy enough to avoid eating them in any case[125] (and this aspect of seeking better
alternatives is a prominent part of utilitarianism).
This view still might be contrasted with deep ecology, which holds that an intrinsic value is
attached to all forms of life and nature, whether currently assumed to be sentient or not.
According to utilitarianism, most forms of life (i.e. non-animals) are unable to experience
anything akin to either enjoyment or discomfort, and are therefore denied moral status.[citation needed]
Thus, the moral value of one-celled organisms, as well as some multi-cellular organisms, and
natural entities like a river, is only in the benefit they provide to sentient beings. Similarly,
utilitarianism places no direct intrinsic value on biodiversity, although as far as indirect,
contingent value, it most probably does.
Tyler Cowen argues that, if individual animals are carriers of utility, then we should consider
limiting the predatory activity of carnivores relative to their victims: "At the very least, we
should limit current subsidies to natures carnivores."[126]
Future generations

The number of future generations is potentially very large. If a utilitarian values the welfare of
future humans, even small risks of human extinction (for example, from meteor impacts[127])
should be given a high priority.[128][129]
Human rights
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improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced
material may be challenged and removed. (September 2011)

Utilitarians argue that justification of slavery, torture or mass murder would require
unrealistically large benefits to outweigh the direct and extreme suffering to victims.
Utilitarianism would also require the indirect impact of social acceptance of inhumane policies to
be taken into consideration, and general anxiety and fear could increase for all if human rights
are commonly disregarded.
Act and rule utilitarians differ in how they treat human rights themselves. Under rule
utilitarianism, a human right can easily be considered a moral rule. Act utilitarians, on the other
hand, do not accept human rights as moral principles in and of themselves, but that does not
mean that they reject them altogether: first, most act utilitarians, as explained above, would agree

that acts such as enslavement and genocide always cause great unhappiness and very little
happiness; second, human rights could be considered rules of thumb so that, although torture
might be acceptable under some circumstances, as a rule it is immoral; and, finally, act
utilitarians often support human rights in a legal sense because utilitarians support laws that
cause more good than harm.

Existentialism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

"Existential" redirects here. For the logical sense of the term see Existential
quantification. For other uses see Existence (disambiguation). Not to be confused
with Essentialism

From left to right, top to bottom: Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of certain late 19th- and 20th-century philosophers
who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[1][2][3] shared the belief that philosophical thinking
begins with the human subjectnot merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living
human individual.[4] In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has
been called "the existential attitude", or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an
apparently meaningless or absurd world.[5] Many existentialists have also regarded traditional
systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from
concrete human experience.[6][7]
Sren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher,[1][8][9]
though he did not use the term existentialism. He proposed that each individualnot society or
religionis solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely
("authentically").[10][11] Existentialism became popular in the years following World War II, and
strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art,
literature, and psychology.[12]
Contents

1 Definitional issues and background

2 Concepts
o

2.1 Existence precedes essence

2.2 The Absurd

2.3 Facticity

2.4 Authenticity

2.5 The Other and the Look

2.6 Angst

2.7 Despair

3 Opposition to positivism and rationalism

4 Existentialism and religion

5 Existentialism and nihilism

6 Etymology

7 History
o

7.1 19th century

7.1.1 Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

7.1.2 Dostoyevsky

7.2 Early 20th century

7.3 After the Second World War

8 Influence outside philosophy

o

8.1 Art

8.1.1 Film and television

8.1.2 Literature

8.1.3 Theatre

8.2 Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

9 Criticisms
o

9.1 General criticisms

9.2 Sartre's philosophy

10 See also

11 Notes

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External links

Definitional issues and background

There has never been general agreement on the definition of existentialism. The term is often
seen as a historical convenience as it was first applied to many philosophers in hindsight, long
after they had died. In fact, while existentialism is generally considered to have originated with
Kierkegaard, the first prominent existentialist philosopher to adopt the term as a self-description
was Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre purports the idea that that which "all existentialists have in common
is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence," as scholar F.C.Copleston explains.
[13]
According to philosopher Steven Crowell, defining existentialism has been relatively difficult,
and he argues that it is better understood as a general approach used to reject certain systematic
philosophies rather than as a systematic philosophy itself.[1]
Although many outside Scandinavia consider the term existentialism to have originated from
Kierkegaard himself, it is more likely that Kierkegaard adopted this term (or at least the term
"existential" as a description of his philosophy) from the Norwegian poet and literary critic Johan
Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven.[14] This assertion comes from two sources. The Norwegian
philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern. Sibbern
is supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with
Kierkegaard. It is in the first conversation that it is believed that Welhaven came up with "a word
that he said covered a certain thinking, which had a close and positive attitude to life, a
relationship he described as existential".[15] This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern.
The second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claims to prove that
Kierkegaard himself said the term "existential" was borrowed from the poet. He strongly
believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that "Hegelians do not study philosophy
'existentially'; to use a phrase by Welhaven from one time when I spoke with him about
philosophy".[16] On the other hand, the Norwegian historian Anne-Lise Seip is critical of

Slagstad, and believes the statement in fact stems from the Norwegian literary historian
Cathrinus Bang.[17]
Concepts
Existence precedes essence
Main article: Existence precedes essence

A central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which means that the
most important consideration for the individual is the fact that he or she is an individualan
independently acting and responsible conscious being ("existence")rather than what labels,
roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories the individual fits ("essence").
The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called his or her "true essence"
instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence used by others to define him or her. Thus,
human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a
meaning to their life.[18] Although it was Sartre who explicitly coined the phrase, similar notions
can be found in the thought of existentialist philosophers such as Heidegger, and Kierkegaard:
"The subjective thinkers form, the form of his communication, is his style. His form must be just
as manifold as are the opposites that he holds together. The systematic eins, zwei, drei is an
abstract form that also must inevitably run into trouble whenever it is to be applied to the
concrete. To the same degree as the subjective thinker is concrete, to the same degree his form
must also be concretely dialectical. But just as he himself is not a poet, not an ethicist, not a
dialectician, so also his form is none of theirs directly. His form must first and last be related to
existence, and in this regard he must have at his disposal the poetic, the ethical, the dialectical,
the religious. Subordinate character, setting, etc., which belong to the well balanced character of
the esthetic production, are in themselves breadth; the subjective thinker has only one settingexistence-and has nothing to do with localities and such things. The setting is not the fairyland of
the imagination, where poetry produces consummation, nor is the setting laid in England, and
historical accuracy is not a concern. The setting is inwardness in existing as a human being; the
concretion is the relation of the existence-categories to one another. Historical accuracy and
historical actuality are breadth." Sren Kierkegaard (Concluding Postscript, Hong p. 357-358)
It is often claimed in this context that a person defines himself or herself, which is often
perceived as stating that they can wish to be somethinganything, a bird, for instanceand then
be it. According to most existentialist philosophers, however, this would constitute an inauthentic
existence. Instead, the phrase should be taken to say that the person is (1) defined only insofar as
he or she acts and (2) that he or she is responsible for his or her actions. For example, someone
who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Furthermore, by
this action of cruelty, such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (a cruel
person). This is as opposed to their genes, or 'human nature', bearing the blame.

As Sartre writes in his work Existentialism is a Humanism: "...man first of all exists, encounters
himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards." Of course, the more positive,
therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: A person can choose to act in a different way, and to be
a good person instead of a cruel person. Here it is also clear that since humans can choose to be
either cruel or good, they are, in fact, neither of these things essentially.[19]
The Absurd
Main article: Absurdism

The notion of the Absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning to be found in the world
beyond what meaning we give to it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or
"unfairness" of the world. This contrasts with the notion that "bad things don't happen to good
people"; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad
person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad"
person.[20]
Because of the world's absurdity, at any point in time, anything can happen to anyone, and a
tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the Absurd. The notion of the
absurd has been prominent in literature throughout history. Many of the literary works of Sren
Kierkegaard, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Eugne Ionesco, Jean-Paul
Sartre, and Albert Camus contain descriptions of people who encounter the absurdity of the
world.
It is in relation to the concept of the devastating awareness of meaninglessness that Albert Camus
claimed that "there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide" in his
The Myth of Sisyphus. Although "prescriptions" against the possibly deleterious consequences of
these kinds of encounters vary, from Kierkegaard's religious "stage" to Camus' insistence on
persevering in spite of absurdity, the concern with helping people avoid living their lives in ways
that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to
most existentialist philosophers. The possibility of having everything meaningful break down
poses a threat of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy.[21] It has been
said that the possibility of suicide makes all humans existentialists.[22]
Facticity
Main article: Facticity

Facticity is a concept defined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness as the "in-itself", of which
humans are in the mode of not being. This can be more easily understood when considering it in
relation to the temporal dimension of past: one's past is what one is in the sense that it coconstitutes oneself. However, to say that one is only one's past would be to ignore a significant
part of reality (the present and the future), while saying that one's past is only what one was,

would entirely detach it from them now. A denial of one's own concrete past constitutes an
inauthentic lifestyle, and the same goes for all other kinds of facticity (having a bodye.g. one
that doesn't allow a person to run faster than the speed of soundidentity, values, etc.).[23]
Facticity is both a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a limitation in that a large part of
one's facticity consists of things one couldn't have chosen (birthplace, etc.), but a condition in the
sense that one's values most likely will depend on it. However, even though one's facticity is "set
in stone" (as being past, for instance), it cannot determine a person: The value ascribed to one's
facticity is still ascribed to it freely by that person. As an example, consider two men, one of
whom has no memory of his past and the other remembers everything. They have both
committed many crimes, but the first man, knowing nothing about this, leads a rather normal life
while the second man, feeling trapped by his own past, continues a life of crime, blaming his
own past for "trapping" him in this life. There is nothing essential about his committing crimes,
but he ascribes this meaning to his past.
However, to disregard one's facticity when one, in the continual process of self-making, projects
oneself into the future, would be to put oneself in denial of oneself, and would thus be
inauthentic. In other words, the origin of one's projection will still have to be one's facticity,
although in the mode of not being it (essentially). Another aspect of facticity is that it entails
angst, both in the sense that freedom "produces" angst when limited by facticity, and in the sense
that the lack of the possibility of having facticity to "step in" for one to take responsibility for
something one has done also produces angst.
What is not implied in this account of existential freedom, however, is that one's values are
immutable; a consideration of one's values may cause one to reconsider and change them. A
consequence of this fact is that one is responsible for not only one's actions, but also the values
one holds. This entails that a reference to common values doesn't excuse the individual's actions:
Even though these are the values of the society of which the individual is part, they are also
his/her own in the sense that she/he could choose them to be different at any time. Thus, the
focus on freedom in existentialism is related to the limits of the responsibility one bears as a
result of one's freedom: the relationship between freedom and responsibility is one of
interdependency, and a clarification of freedom also clarifies that for which one is responsible.[24]
[25]

Authenticity
Main article: Authenticity

Many noted existentialist writers consider the theme of authentic existence to be of importance.
Authentic existence involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and then live in accordance
with this self. What is meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should act as oneself, not as
"one" acts or as "one's genes" or any other essence requires. The authentic act is one that is in

accordance with one's freedom. Of course, as a condition of freedom is facticity, this includes
one's facticity, but not to the degree that this facticity can in any way determine one's choices (in
the sense that one could then blame one's background for making the choice one made). The role
of facticity in relation to authenticity involves letting one's actual values come into play when
one makes a choice (instead of, like Kierkegaard's Aesthete, "choosing" randomly), so that one
also takes responsibility for the act instead of choosing either-or without allowing the options to
have different values.[26]
In contrast to this, the inauthentic is the denial to live in accordance with one's freedom. This can
take many forms, from pretending choices are meaningless or random, through convincing
oneself that some form of determinism is true, to a sort of "mimicry" where one acts as "one
should." How "one" should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as
oneself (say, a bank manager, lion tamer, prostitute, etc.) acts. This image usually corresponds to
some sort of social norm, but this does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms
is inauthentic: The main point is the attitude one takes to one's own freedom and responsibility,
and the extent to which one acts in accordance with this freedom.
The Other and the Look
Main article: Other

The Other (when written with a capital "o") is a concept more properly belonging to
phenomenology and its account of intersubjectivity. However, the concept has seen widespread
use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn from it differ slightly from the
phenomenological accounts. The experience of the Other is the experience of another free
subject who inhabits the same world as a person does. In its most basic form, it is this experience
of the Other that constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity. To clarify, when one experiences
someone else, and this Other person experiences the world (the same world that a person
experiences), only from "over there", the world itself is constituted as objective in that it is
something that is "there" as identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other
person as experiencing the same as he or she does. This experience of the Other's look is what is
termed the Look (sometimes the Gaze).[27]
While this experience, in its basic phenomenological sense, constitutes the world as objective,
and oneself as objectively existing subjectivity (one experiences oneself as seen in the Other's
Look in precisely the same way that one experiences the Other as seen by him, as subjectivity),
in existentialism, it also acts as a kind of limitation of one's freedom. This is because the Look
tends to objectify what it sees. As such, when one experiences oneself in the Look, one doesn't
experience oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something. Sartre's own example of a man
peeping at someone through a keyhole can help clarify this: at first, this man is entirely caught up
in the situation he is in; he is in a pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at
what goes on in the room. Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him, and he becomes

aware of himself as seen by the Other. He is thus filled with shame for he perceives himself as he
would perceive someone else doing what he was doing, as a Peeping Tom. The Look is then coconstitutive of one's facticity.
Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other really needs to have been there: It is
quite possible that the creaking floorboard was nothing but the movement of an old house; the
Look isn't some kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the other sees one (there
may also have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that the person was there). It is
only one's perception of the way another might perceive him.
Angst
Main article: Angst

"Existential angst", sometimes called dread, anxiety, or anguish, is a term that is common to
many existentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the
experience of human freedom and responsibility. The archetypal example is the experience one
has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility
of throwing oneself off. In this experience that "nothing is holding me back", one senses the lack
of anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one
experiences one's own freedom.[20]
It can also be seen in relation to the previous point how angst is before nothing, and this is what
sets it apart from fear that has an object. While in the case of fear, one can take definitive
measures to remove the object of fear, in the case of angst, no such "constructive" measures are
possible. The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates both to the inherent insecurity
about the consequences of one's actions, and to the fact that, in experiencing one's freedom as
angst, one also realizes that one will be fully responsible for these consequences; there is no
thing in a person (his or her genes, for instance) that acts in her or his stead, and that he or she
can "blame" if something goes wrong. Therefore, not every choice is perceived as having
dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, human lives would be unbearable if
every choice facilitated dread). However, this doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a
condition of every action. Angst is often described as a drama an adolescent troubles with during
their developmental years. This adolescent trouble or self-loathing is often tied to sexual
attractiveness, both males and females often feel this angst and worry that they will not find both
a partner or romantic conditional love for who they are. As adolescents face the prospect of
adulthood where they must take control of their life the dread of both facing life alone and the
fear of freedom and responsibility often lead to depression.
Despair
Main article: Despair

See also: Existential crisis

Despair, in existentialism, is generally defined as a loss of hope.[28] More specifically, it is a loss

of hope in reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or
identity. If a person is invested in being a particular thing, such as a bus driver or an upstanding
citizen, and then finds his being-thing compromised, he would normally be found in state of
despair a hopeless state. For example, a singer who loses her ability to sing may despair if she
has nothing else to fall back on, nothing on which to rely for her identity. She finds herself
unable to be what defined her being.
What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that
existentialist despair is a state one is in even when he isn't overtly in despair. So long as a
person's identity depends on qualities that can crumble, he is considered to be in perpetual
despair. And as there is, in Sartrean terms, no human essence found in conventional reality on
which to constitute the individual's sense of identity, despair is a universal human condition. As
Kierkegaard defines it in Either/Or: "Let each one learn what he can; both of us can learn that a
persons unhappiness never lies in his lack of control over external conditions, since this would
only make him completely unhappy."[29] In Works of Love, he said:
When the God-forsaken worldliness of earthly life shuts itself in complacency, the confined air
develops poison, the moment gets stuck and stands still, the prospect is lost, a need is felt for a
refreshing, enlivening breeze to cleanse the air and dispel the poisonous vapors lest we suffocate
in worldliness. ... Lovingly to hope all things is the opposite of despairingly to hope nothing at
all. Love hopes all things yet is never put to shame. To relate oneself expectantly to the
possibility of the good is to hope. To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility of evil is to fear.
By the decision to choose hope one decides infinitely more than it seems, because it is an eternal
decision. p. 246-250
Opposition to positivism and rationalism
See also: Positivism and Rationalism

Existentialists oppose definitions of human beings as primarily rational, and, therefore, oppose
positivism and rationalism. Existentialism asserts that people actually make decisions based on
subjective meaning rather than pure rationality. The rejection of reason as the source of meaning
is a common theme of existentialist thought, as is the focus on the feelings of anxiety and dread
that we feel in the face of our own radical freedom and our awareness of death. Kierkegaard
advocated rationality as means to interact with the objective world (e.g. in the natural sciences),
but when it comes to existential problems, reason is insufficient: "Human reason has
boundaries".[30]

Like Kierkegaard, Sartre saw problems with rationality, calling it a form of "bad faith", an
attempt by the self to impose structure on a world of phenomena "the Other" that is
fundamentally irrational and random. According to Sartre, rationality and other forms of bad
faith hinder people from finding meaning in freedom. To try to suppress their feelings of anxiety
and dread, people confine themselves within everyday experience, Sartre asserts, thereby
relinquishing their freedom and acquiescing to being possessed in one form or another by "the
Look" of "the Other" (i.e. possessed by another person or at least one's idea of that other
person).
Existentialism and religion
See also: Atheistic existentialism, Christian existentialism, and Jewish existentialism

An existentialist reading of the Bible would demand that the reader recognize that he is an
existing subject studying the words more as a recollection of events. This is in contrast to
looking at a collection of "truths" that are outside and unrelated to the reader, but may develop a
sense of reality/God.[31] Such a reader is not obligated to follow the commandments as if an
external agent is forcing them upon him, but as though they are inside him and guiding him from
inside. This is the task Kierkegaard takes up when he asks: "Who has the more difficult task: the
teacher who lectures on earnest things a meteor's distance from everyday life or the learner
who should put it to use?"[32]
Existentialism and nihilism
See also: Existential nihilism

Although nihilism and existentialism are distinct philosophies, they are often confused with one
another. A primary cause of confusion is that Friedrich Nietzsche is an important philosopher in
both fields, but also the existentialist insistence on the inherent meaninglessness of the world.
Existentialist philosophers often stress the importance of Angst as signifying the absolute lack of
any objective ground for action, a move that is often reduced to a moral or an existential
nihilism. A pervasive theme in the works of existentialist philosophy, however, is to persist
through encounters with the absurd, as seen in Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus ("One must imagine
Sisyphus happy"),[33] and it is only very rarely that existentialist philosophers dismiss morality or
one's self-created meaning: Kierkegaard regained a sort of morality in the religious (although he
wouldn't himself agree that it was ethical; the religious suspends the ethical), and Sartre's final
words in Being and Nothingness are "All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not an
accessory (or impure) reflection, can find their reply only on the ethical plane. We shall devote to
them a future work."[34]
Etymology

The term "existentialism" was coined by the French, Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel in the
mid-1940s.[35][36][37] At first, when Marcel applied the term to him at a colloquium in 1945, JeanPaul Sartre rejected it.[38] But later, he changed his mind and, on October 29, 1945, publicly
adopted the existentialist label in a lecture to the Club Maintenant in Paris. The lecture was
published as L'existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism), a short book
that did much to popularize existentialist thought.[39]
Some scholars argue that the term should be used only to refer to the cultural movement in
Europe in the 1940s and 1950s associated with the works of the philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre,
Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Albert Camus.[1] Other scholars extend the
term to Kierkegaard, and yet others extend it as far back as Socrates.[40] However, the term is
often identified with the philosophical views of Jean-Paul Sartre.[1]
History
19th century
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Main article: Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
See also: Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche

Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were two of the first philosophers considered
fundamental to the existentialist movement, though neither used the term "existentialism" and it
is unclear whether they would have supported the existentialism of the 20th century. They
focused on subjective human experience rather than the objective truths of mathematics and
science, which they believed were too detached or observational to truly get at the human
experience. Like Pascal, they were interested in people's quiet struggle with the apparent
meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape from boredom. Unlike Pascal,
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche also considered the role of making free choices, particularly
regarding fundamental values and beliefs, and how such choices change the nature and identity
of the chooser.[41] Kierkegaard's knight of faith and Nietzsche's bermensch are representative of
people who exhibit Freedom, in that they define the nature of their own existence. Nietzsche's
idealized individual invents his or her own values and creates the very terms they excel under.
By contrast, Kierkegaard, opposed to the level of abstraction in Hegel, and not nearly as hostile
(actually welcoming) to Christianity as Nietzsche, argues through a pseudonym that the objective
certainty of religious truths (specifically Christian) is not only impossible, but even founded on
logical paradoxes. Yet he continues to imply that a leap of faith is a possible means for an
individual to reach a higher stage of existence that transcends and contains both an aesthetic and
ethical value of life. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were also precursors to other intellectual
movements, including postmodernism, and various strands of psychology. However,
Kierkegaard believed that an individual should live in accordance with his or her thinking. This

point of view is forced upon religious individuals much more often than upon philosophers,
psychologists, or scientists.
Dostoyevsky
Main article: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The first important literary author also important to existentialism was the Russian Fyodor
Dostoyevsky.[42] Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground portrays a man unable to fit into society
and unhappy with the identities he creates for himself. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book on
existentialism Existentialism is a Humanism, quoted Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as
an example of existential crisis. Sartre attributes Ivan Karamazov's claim, "If God did not exist,
everything would be permitted"[43] to Dostoyevsky himself. Other Dostoyevsky novels covered
issues raised in existentialist philosophy while presenting story lines divergent from secular
existentialism: for example, in Crime and Punishment, the protagonist Raskolnikov experiences
an existential crisis and then moves toward a Christian Orthodox worldview similar to that
advocated by Dostoyevsky himself.[citation needed]
Early 20th century
See also: Martin Heidegger

In the first decades of the 20th century, a number of philosophers and writers explored
existentialist ideas. The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, in his 1913 book The
Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations, emphasized the life of "flesh and bone" as opposed to
that of abstract rationalism. Unamuno rejected systematic philosophy in favor of the individual's
quest for faith. He retained a sense of the tragic, even absurd nature of the quest, symbolized by
his enduring interest in Cervantes' fictional character Don Quixote. A novelist, poet and dramatist
as well as philosophy professor at the University of Salamanca, Unamuno wrote a short story
about a priest's crisis of faith, Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr, which has been collected in
anthologies of existentialist fiction. Another Spanish thinker, Ortega y Gasset, writing in 1914,
held that human existence must always be defined as the individual person combined with the
concrete circumstances of his life: "Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias" ("I am myself and my
circumstances"). Sartre likewise believed that human existence is not an abstract matter, but is
always situated, also many thought his plays were absurd ("en situacin").
Although Martin Buber wrote his major philosophical works in German, and studied and taught
at the Universities of Berlin and Frankfurt, he stands apart from the mainstream of German
philosophy. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1878, he was also a scholar of Jewish culture
and involved at various times in Zionism and Hasidism. In 1938, he moved permanently to
Jerusalem. His best-known philosophical work was the short book I and Thou, published in
1922. For Buber, the fundamental fact of human existence, too readily overlooked by scientific

rationalism and abstract philosophical thought, is "man with man", a dialogue that takes place in
the so-called "sphere of between" ("das Zwischenmenschliche").[44]
Two Ukrainian/Russian thinkers, Lev Shestov and Nikolai Berdyaev, became well known as
existentialist thinkers during their post-Revolutionary exiles in Paris. Shestov, born into a
Ukrainian-Jewish family in Kiev, had launched an attack on rationalism and systematization in
philosophy as early as 1905 in his book of aphorisms All Things Are Possible.
Berdyaev, also from Kiev but with a background in the Eastern Orthodox Church, drew a radical
distinction between the world of spirit and the everyday world of objects. Human freedom, for
Berdyaev, is rooted in the realm of spirit, a realm independent of scientific notions of causation.
To the extent the individual human being lives in the objective world, he is estranged from
authentic spiritual freedom. "Man" is not to be interpreted naturalistically, but as a being created
in God's image, an originator of free, creative acts.[45] He published a major work on these
themes, The Destiny of Man, in 1931.
Gabriel Marcel, long before coining the term "existentialism", introduced important existentialist
themes to a French audience in his early essay "Existence and Objectivity" (1925) and in his
Metaphysical Journal (1927).[46] A dramatist as well as a philosopher, Marcel found his
philosophical starting point in a condition of metaphysical alienation: the human individual
searching for harmony in a transient life. Harmony, for Marcel, was to be sought through
"secondary reflection", a "dialogical" rather than "dialectical" approach to the world,
characterized by "wonder and astonishment" and open to the "presence" of other people and of
God rather than merely to "information" about them. For Marcel, such presence implied more
than simply being there (as one thing might be in the presence of another thing); it connoted
"extravagant" availability, and the willingness to put oneself at the disposal of the other.[47]
Marcel contrasted secondary reflection with abstract, scientific-technical primary reflection,
which he associated with the activity of the abstract Cartesian ego. For Marcel, philosophy was a
concrete activity undertaken by a sensing, feeling human being incarnate embodied in a
concrete world.[46][48] Although Jean-Paul Sartre adopted the term "existentialism" for his own
philosophy in the 1940s, Marcel's thought has been described as "almost diametrically opposed"
to that of Sartre.[46] Unlike Sartre, Marcel was a Christian, and became a Catholic convert in
1929.
In Germany, the psychologist and philosopher Karl Jaspers who later described existentialism
as a "phantom" created by the public [49] called his own thought, heavily influenced by
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Existenzphilosophie. For Jaspers, "Existenz-philosophy is the way of
thought by means of which man seeks to become himself...This way of thought does not cognize
objects, but elucidates and makes actual the being of the thinker."[50]

Jaspers, a professor at the University of Heidelberg, was acquainted with Martin Heidegger, who
held a professorship at Marburg before acceding to Husserl's chair at Freiburg in 1928. They held
many philosophical discussions, but later became estranged over Heidegger's support of National
Socialism. They shared an admiration for Kierkegaard,[51] and in the 1930s, Heidegger lectured
extensively on Nietzsche. Nevertheless, the extent to which Heidegger should be considered an
existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical
explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories
(existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the
existentialist movement.
After the Second World War
See also: Jean-Paul Sartre

Following the Second World War, existentialism became a well-known and significant
philosophical and cultural movement, mainly through the public prominence of two French
writers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, who wrote best-selling novels, plays and widely
read journalism as well as theoretical texts. These years also saw the growing reputation of
Heidegger's book Being and Time outside of Germany.[citation needed]

French philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in his 1938 novel Nausea and the short stories in his 1939
collection The Wall, and had published his treatise on existentialism, Being and Nothingness, in
1943, but it was in the two years following the liberation of Paris from the German occupying
forces that he and his close associates Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
and others became internationally famous as the leading figures of a movement known as

existentialism.[52] In a very short space of time, Camus and Sartre in particular became the
leading public intellectuals of post-war France, achieving by the end of 1945 "a fame that
reached across all audiences."[53] Camus was an editor of the most popular leftist (former French
Resistance) newspaper Combat; Sartre launched his journal of leftist thought, Les Temps
Modernes, and two weeks later gave the widely reported lecture on existentialism and secular
humanism to a packed meeting of the Club Maintenant. Beauvoir wrote that "not a week passed
without the newspapers discussing us";[54] existentialism became "the first media craze of the
postwar era."[55]
By the end of 1947, Camus' earlier fiction and plays had been reprinted, his new play Caligula
had been performed and his novel The Plague published; the first two novels of Sartre's The
Roads to Freedom trilogy had appeared, as had Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others. Works by
Camus and Sartre were already appearing in foreign editions. The Paris-based existentialists had
become famous.[52]
Sartre had traveled to Germany in 1930 to study the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and
Martin Heidegger,[56] and he included critical comments on their work in his major treatise Being
and Nothingness. Heidegger's thought had also become known in French philosophical circles
through its use by Alexandre Kojve in explicating Hegel in a series of lectures given in Paris in
the 1930s.[57] The lectures were highly influential; members of the audience included not only
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, but Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Louis Althusser, Andr
Breton, and Jacques Lacan.[58] A selection from Heidegger's Being and Time was published in
French in 1938, and his essays began to appear in French philosophy journals.

French-Algerian philosopher, novelist, and playwright Albert Camus

Heidegger read Sartre's work and was initially impressed, commenting: "Here for the first time I
encountered an independent thinker who, from the foundations up, has experienced the area out
of which I think. Your work shows such an immediate comprehension of my philosophy as I
have never before encountered."[59] Later, however, in response to a question posed by his French
follower Jean Beaufret,[60] Heidegger distanced himself from Sartre's position and existentialism
in general in his Letter on Humanism.[61] Heidegger's reputation continued to grow in France
during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s, Sartre attempted to reconcile existentialism and
Marxism in his work Critique of Dialectical Reason. A major theme throughout his writings was
freedom and responsibility.
Camus was a friend of Sartre, until their falling-out, and wrote several works with existential
themes including The Rebel, The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Summer in Algiers.
Camus, like many others, rejected the existentialist label, and considered his works to be
concerned with facing the absurd. In the titular book, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth

of Sisyphus to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for
eternity to roll a rock up a hill, but when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom
again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless but that Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning
and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it. The first half of the book
contains an extended rebuttal of what Camus took to be existentialist philosophy in the works of
Kierkegaard, Shestov, Heidegger, and Jaspers.
Simone de Beauvoir, an important existentialist who spent much of her life as Sartre's partner,
wrote about feminist and existentialist ethics in her works, including The Second Sex and The
Ethics of Ambiguity. Although often overlooked due to her relationship with Sartre,[citation needed] de
Beauvoir integrated existentialism with other forms of thinking such as feminism, unheard of at
the time, resulting in alienation from fellow writers such as Camus.[citation needed]
Paul Tillich, an important existentialist theologian following Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, applied
existentialist concepts to Christian theology, and helped introduce existential theology to the
general public. His seminal work The Courage to Be follows Kierkegaard's analysis of anxiety
and life's absurdity, but puts forward the thesis that modern humans must, via God, achieve
selfhood in spite of life's absurdity. Rudolf Bultmann used Kierkegaard's and Heidegger's
philosophy of existence to demythologize Christianity by interpreting Christian mythical
concepts into existentialist concepts.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, an existential phenomenologist, was for a time a companion of Sartre.
His understanding of Husserl's phenomenology was far greater than that of Merleau-Ponty's
fellow existentialists.[vague] It has been said that his work Humanism and Terror greatly influenced
Sartre. However, in later years they were to disagree irreparably, dividing many existentialists
such as de Beauvoir,[citation needed] who sided with Sartre.
Colin Wilson, an English writer, published his study The Outsider in 1956, initially to critical
acclaim. In this book and others (e.g. Introduction to the New Existentialism), he attempted to
reinvigorate what he perceived as a pessimistic philosophy and bring it to a wider audience. He
was not, however, academically trained, and his work was attacked by professional philosophers
for lack of rigor and critical standards.[62]
Influence outside philosophy
Art
Film and television

The French director Jean Genet's 1950 fantasy-erotic film Un chant d'amour shows two inmates
in solitary cells whose only contact is through a hole in their cell wall, who are spied on by the
prison warden. Reviewer James Travers calls the film a, "...visual poem evoking homosexual

desire and existentialist suffering," which "... conveys the bleakness of an existence in a godless
universe with painful believability"; he calls it "... probably the most effective fusion of
existentialist philosophy and cinema."[63]
Stanley Kubrick's 1957 anti-war film Paths of Glory "illustrates, and even
illuminates...existentialism" by examining the "necessary absurdity of the human condition" and
the "horror of war".[64] The film tells the story of a fictional World War I French army regiment
ordered to attack an impregnable German stronghold; when the attack fails, three soldiers are
chosen at random, court-martialed by a "kangaroo court", and executed by firing squad. The film
examines existentialist ethics, such as the issue of whether objectivity is possible and the
"problem of authenticity".[64]
Neon Genesis Evangelion, commonly referred to as Evangelion or Eva, is a Japanese sciencefiction animation series created by the anime studio Gainax and was both directed and written by
Hideaki Anno. Existential themes of individuality, consciousness, freedom, choice, and
responsibility are heavily relied upon throughout the entire series, particularly through the
philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Sren Kierkegaard. Episode 16's title, "The Sickness Unto
Death, And" ( Shi ni itaru yamai, soshite?) is a reference to
Kierkegaard's book, The Sickness Unto Death.
On the lighter side, the British comedy troupe Monty Python have explored existentialist themes
throughout their works, from many of the sketches in their original television show, Monty
Python's Flying Circus, to their 1983 film Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.[65]
Some contemporary films dealing with existentialist issues include Fight Club, I Huckabees,
Waking Life, The Matrix, Ordinary People, and Life in a Day.[66] Likewise, films throughout the
20th century such as The Seventh Seal, Ikiru, Taxi Driver, Harold and Maude, High Noon, Easy
Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Clockwork Orange, Groundhog Day, Apocalypse
Now, Badlands, and Blade Runner also have existentialist qualities.[67]
The Matrix has been compared with another movie, Dark City[68] where the issues of identity and
reality are raised. In Dark City, the inhabitants of the city are situated in a world controlled by
demiurges, much like the prisoners in Plato's cave, in which prisoners see a world of shadows
reflected onto a cave wall, rather than the world as it actually is.[69]
Notable directors known for their existentialist films include Ingmar Bergman, Franois Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Akira Kurosawa, Terrence Malick, Stanley Kubrick,
Andrei Tarkovsky, Hideaki Anno, Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, and Christopher Nolan.[70]
Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York focuses on the protagonist's desire to find existential
meaning.[71] Similarly, in Kurosawa's Red Beard, the protagonist's experiences as an intern in a

rural health clinic in Japan lead him to an existential crisis whereby he questions his reason for
being. This, in turn, leads him to a better understanding of humanity.
Recently released French film, Mood Indigo (film) (directed by Michel Gondry) embraced
various elements of existentialism.
Literature

Existential perspectives are also found in literature to varying degrees since 1922. LouisFerdinand Cline's Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1932) celebrated
by both Sartre and Beauvoir, contained many of the themes that would be found in later
existential literature, and is in some ways, the proto-existential novel. Jean-Paul Sartre's 1938
novel Nausea[72] was "steeped in Existential ideas", and is considered an accessible way of
grasping his philosophical stance.[73] Between 1910 and 1960, other authors such as Albert
Camus, Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Herman Hesse and Jack Kerouac,
composed literature or poetry that contained, to varying degrees, elements of existential or protoexistential thought. Since the late 1960s, a great deal of cultural activity in literature contains
postmodernist as well as existential elements. Books such as Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? (1968) (now republished as Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick, Slaughterhouse-Five by
Kurt Vonnegut, and Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk all distort the line between reality and
appearance while simultaneously espousing existential themes. Ideas from such writers as
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Michel Foucault, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sren Kierkegaard,
Herbert Marcuse, Gilles Deleuze, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Eduard von Hartmann permeate the
works of modern novelists such as Chuck Palahniuk, Crispin Glover, and Charles Bukowski, and
one often finds in their works a delicate balance between distastefulness and beauty.
Theatre

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote No Exit in 1944, an existentialist play originally published in French as
Huis Clos (meaning In Camera or "behind closed doors"), which is the source of the popular
quote, "Hell is other people." (In French, "L'enfer, c'est les autres"). The play begins with a Valet
leading a man into a room that the audience soon realizes is in hell. Eventually he is joined by
two women. After their entry, the Valet leaves and the door is shut and locked. All three expect to
be tortured, but no torturer arrives. Instead, they realize they are there to torture each other,
which they do effectively by probing each other's sins, desires, and unpleasant memories.
Existentialist themes are displayed in the Theatre of the Absurd, notably in Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot, in which two men divert themselves while they wait expectantly for someone
(or something) named Godot who never arrives. They claim Godot to be an acquaintance, but in
fact hardly know him, admitting they would not recognize him if they saw him. Samuel Beckett,
once asked who or what Godot is, replied, "If I knew, I would have said so in the play." To
occupy themselves, the men eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and

contemplate suicideanything "to hold the terrible silence at bay".[74] The play "exploits several
archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos."[75] The
play also illustrates an attitude toward human experience on earth: the poignancy, oppression,
camaraderie, hope, corruption, and bewilderment of human experience that can be reconciled
only in the mind and art of the absurdist. The play examines questions such as death, the
meaning of human existence and the place of God in human existence.
Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist tragicomedy first staged at
the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966.[76] The play expands upon the exploits of two minor
characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Comparisons have also been drawn to Samuel Beckett's
Waiting For Godot, for the presence of two central characters who almost appear to be two
halves of a single character. Many plot features are similar as well: the characters pass time by
playing Questions, impersonating other characters, and interrupting each other or remaining
silent for long periods of time. The two characters are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a
world that is beyond their understanding. They stumble through philosophical arguments while
not realizing the implications, and muse on the irrationality and randomness of the world.
Jean Anouilh's Antigone also presents arguments founded on existentialist ideas.[77] It is a tragedy
inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name (Antigone, by Sophocles) from the
5th century BC. In English, it is often distinguished from its antecedent by being pronounced in
its original French form, approximately "Ante-GN." The play was first performed in Paris on 6
February 1944, during the Nazi occupation of France. Produced under Nazi censorship, the play
is purposefully ambiguous with regards to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone)
and the acceptance of it (represented by Creon). The parallels to the French Resistance and the
Nazi occupation have been drawn. Antigone rejects life as desperately meaningless but without
affirmatively choosing a noble death. The crux of the play is the lengthy dialogue concerning the
nature of power, fate, and choice, during which Antigone says that she is, "... disgusted with
[the]...promise of a humdrum happiness." She states that she would rather die than live a
mediocre existence.
Critic Martin Esslin in his book Theatre of the Absurd pointed out how many contemporary
playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugne Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov wove into
their plays the existentialist belief that we are absurd beings loose in a universe empty of real
meaning. Esslin noted that many of these playwrights demonstrated the philosophy better than
did the plays by Sartre and Camus. Though most of such playwrights, subsequently labeled
"Absurdist" (based on Esslin's book), denied affiliations with existentialism and were often
staunchly anti-philosophical (for example Ionesco often claimed he identified more with
'Pataphysics or with Surrealism than with existentialism), the playwrights are often linked to
existentialism based on Esslin's observation.[78]
Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

Main article: Existential therapy

A major offshoot of existentialism as a philosophy is existentialist psychology and

psychoanalysis, which first crystallized in the work of Otto Rank, Freud's closest associate for 20
years. Without awareness of the writings of Rank, Ludwig Binswanger was influenced by Freud,
Edmund Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. A later figure was Viktor Frankl, who briefly met Freud
and studied with Jung as a young man.[79] His logotherapy can be regarded as a form of
existentialist therapy. The existentialists would also influence social psychology, antipositivist
micro-sociology, symbolic interactionism, and post-structuralism, with the work of thinkers such
as Georg Simmel[80] and Michel Foucault. Foucault was a great reader of Kierkegaard even
though he almost never refers this author, who nonetheless had for him an importance as secret
as it was decisive.[81]
An early contributor to existentialist psychology in the United States was Rollo May, who was
strongly influenced by Kierkegaard and Otto Rank. One of the most prolific writers on
techniques and theory of existentialist psychology in the USA is Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom states
that
Aside from their reaction against Freud's mechanistic, deterministic model of the mind and their
assumption of a phenomenological approach in therapy, the existentialist analysts have little in
common and have never been regarded as a cohesive ideological school. These thinkers - who
include Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, Eugne Minkowski, V.E. Gebsattel, Roland Kuhn, G.
Caruso, F.T. Buytendijk, G. Bally and Victor Frankl - were almost entirely unknown to the
American psychotherapeutic community until Rollo May's highly influential 1985 book
Existence - and especially his introductory essay - introduced their work into this country.[82]
A more recent contributor to the development of a European version of existentialist
psychotherapy is the British-based Emmy van Deurzen.
Anxiety's importance in existentialism makes it a popular topic in psychotherapy. Therapists
often offer existentialist philosophy as an explanation for anxiety. The assertion is that anxiety is
manifested of an individual's complete freedom to decide, and complete responsibility for the
outcome of such decisions. Psychotherapists using an existentialist approach believe that a
patient can harness his anxiety and use it constructively. Instead of suppressing anxiety, patients
are advised to use it as grounds for change. By embracing anxiety as inevitable, a person can use
it to achieve his full potential in life. Humanistic psychology also had major impetus from
existentialist psychology and shares many of the fundamental tenets. Terror management theory,
based on the writings of Ernest Becker and Otto Rank, is a developing area of study within the
academic study of psychology. It looks at what researchers claim to be the implicit emotional
reactions of people confronted with the knowledge that they will eventually die.
Criticisms

General criticisms

Logical positivist philosophers, such as Rudolf Carnap and Alfred Ayer, assert that existentialists
are often confused about the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being".[83] Specifically, they argue
that the verb is transitive and pre-fixed to a predicate (e.g., an apple is red) (without a predicate,
the word is meaningless), and that existentialists frequently misuse the term in this manner.
Raymond Aron was a leader among those that did not embrace existentialism, and considered
themselves rational humanists.[84][85]
Sartre's philosophy

Many critics argue Sartre's philosophy is contradictory. Specifically, they argue that Sartre makes
metaphysical arguments despite his claiming that his philosophical views ignore metaphysics.
Herbert Marcuse criticized Being and Nothingness (1943) by Jean-Paul Sartre for projecting
anxiety and meaninglessness onto the nature of existence itself: "Insofar as Existentialism is a
philosophical doctrine, it remains an idealistic doctrine: it hypostatizes specific historical
conditions of human existence into ontological and metaphysical characteristics. Existentialism
thus becomes part of the very ideology which it attacks, and its radicalism is illusory".[86]
In Letter on Humanism, Heidegger criticized Sartre's existentialism:
Existentialism says existence precedes essence. In this statement he is taking existentia and
essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which, from Plato's time on, has said that
essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical
statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it, he stays with metaphysics, in oblivion of
the truth of Being.[8

A Theory of Justice
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A Theory of Justice

The 1999 Harvard University Press edition

Author(s)

John Rawls

Country

United States

Language

English

Subject(s)

Political philosophy

Genre(s)

Non-fiction

Publisher

Belknap

Publication date

1971

Media type

Print

Pages

560

ISBN

0-674-00078-1

OCLC Number

41266156

Dewey Decimal

320/.01/1 21

LC Classification

JC578 .R38 1999

A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally
published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999. In A Theory of
Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution
of goods in a society) by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social contract. The
resultant theory is known as "Justice as Fairness", from which Rawls derives his two principles
of justice: the liberty principle and the difference principle.
Contents

1 Objective

2 The original position

3 The First Principle of Justice

4 The Second Principle of Justice

5 Relationship to Rawls' later work

6 Criticism

7 See also

8 References

9 Further reading

Objective

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality.
Central to this effort is an account of the circumstances of justice, inspired by David Hume, and a
fair choice situation for parties facing such circumstances, similar to some of Immanuel Kant's
views. Principles of justice are sought to guide the conduct of the parties. These parties are
recognized to face moderate scarcity, and they are neither naturally altruistic nor purely egoistic.
They have ends which they seek to advance, but prefer to advance them through cooperation
with others on mutually acceptable terms. Rawls offers a model of a fair choice situation (the
original position with its veil of ignorance) within which parties would hypothetically choose
mutually acceptable principles of justice. Under such constraints, Rawls believes that parties
would find his favoured principles of justice to be especially attractive, winning out over varied
alternatives, including utilitarian and right-libertarian accounts.

The original position

Main article: Original position

Rawls belongs to the social contract tradition. However, Rawls' social contract takes a different
view from that of previous thinkers. Specifically, Rawls develops what he claims are principles
of justice through the use of an artificial device he calls the Original position in which everyone
decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This "veil" is one that essentially
blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their advantage.
"no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor
does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and
abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the
parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special
psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil
of ignorance."

According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair
to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is
likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that
treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the Original Position would all adopt a
maximin strategy which would maximise the prospects of the least well-off.
They are the principles that rational and free persons concerned to further
their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining
the fundamentals of the terms of their association [Rawls, p 11]

Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two such principles, which
would then govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and
economic advantages across society. The difference principle permits inequalities in the
distribution of goods only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society. Rawls
believes that this principle would be a rational choice for the representatives in the original
position for the following reason: Each member of society has an equal claim on their societys
goods. Natural attributes should not affect this claim, so the basic right of any individual, before
further considerations are taken into account, must be to an equal share in material wealth. What,
then, could justify unequal distribution? Rawls argues that inequality is acceptable only if it is to
the advantage of those who are worst-off.
The agreement that stems from the original position is both hypothetical and ahistorical. It is
hypothetical in the sense that the principles to be derived are what the parties would, under
certain legitimating conditions, agree to, not what they have agreed to. Rawls seeks to use an
argument that the principles of justice are what would be agreed upon if people were in the
hypothetical situation of the original position and that those principles have moral weight as a

result of that. It is ahistorical in the sense that it is not supposed that the agreement has ever been,
or indeed could ever have been, derived in the real world outside of carefully limited
experimental exercises.
The First Principle of Justice

First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensiv

The basic liberties of citizens are, the political liberty to vote and run for office, freedom of
speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, freedom of personal property and freedom from
arbitrary arrest. However, he says:
liberties not on the list, for example, the right to own certain kinds of property (e.g. means of
production) and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire are not basic;
and so they are not protected by the priority of the first principle.[2]
The first principle may not be violated, even for the sake of the second principle, above an
unspecified but low level of economic development. However, because various basic liberties
may conflict, it may be necessary to trade them off against each other for the sake of obtaining
the largest possible system of rights. There is thus some uncertainty as to exactly what is
mandated by the principle, and it is possible that a plurality of sets of liberties satisfy its
requirements.
The Second Principle of Justice
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971,
p.302; revised edition, p. 47):
(a) they are to be of the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of
society, consistent with the just savings principle (the difference principle).
(b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity

Rawls' claim in (a) is that departures from equality of a list of what he calls primary goods
"things which a rational man wants whatever else he wants" [Rawls, 1971, pg. 92]are
justified only to the extent that they improve the lot of those who are worst-off under that
distribution in comparison with the previous, equal, distribution. His position is at least in some
sense egalitarian, with a provison that equality is not to be achieved by worsening the position of
the least advantaged.[clarification needed] An important consequence here, however, is that inequalities
can actually be just on Rawls' view, as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off. His

argument for this position rests heavily on the claim that morally arbitrary factors (for example,
the family one is born into) shouldn't determine one's life chances or opportunities. Rawls is also
keying on an intuition that a person does not morally deserve their inborn talents; thus that one is
not entitled to all the benefits they could possibly receive from them; hence, at least one of the
criteria which could provide an alternative to equality in assessing the justice of distributions is
eliminated.
The stipulation in (b) is lexically prior to that in (a). Fair equality of opportunity requires not
merely that offices and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, but that all have reasonable
opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed. It may be thought that
this stipulation, and even the first principle of justice, may require greater equality than the
difference principle, because large social and economic inequalities, even when they are to the
advantage of the worst-off, will tend seriously to undermine the value of the political liberties
and any measures towards fair equality of opportunity.
Relationship to Rawls' later work

The original Theory of Justice, was an important but controversial and much criticized work of
political philosophy. Although Rawls never retreated from the core argument of A Theory of
Justice, he modified his theory substantially in subsequent works such as Justice as Fairness: A
Restatement (2001), in which he clarified and re-organised much of the argument of A Theory of
Justice.
Criticism

In 1974, Rawls' colleague at Harvard, Robert Nozick, published a defense of libertarian justice,
Anarchy, State, and Utopia.[3] Another Harvard colleague, Michael Walzer, wrote a defense of
communitarian political philosophy, Spheres of Justice,[4] as a result of a seminar he co-taught
with Nozick. In a related line of criticism, Michael Sandel, also a Harvard colleague, wrote
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,[5] which criticized A Theory of Justice for asking us to think
about justice while divorced from the values and aspirations that define who we are as persons,
and which allow us to determine what justice is.
Robert Paul Wolff wrote Understanding Rawls: A Critique and Reconstruction of A Theory of
Justice,[6] which criticized Rawls from a Marxist perspective, immediately following the
publication of A Theory of Justice. Wolff argues in this work that Rawls' theory is an apology for
the status quo insofar as it constructs justice from existing practice and forecloses the possibility
that there may be problems of injustice embedded in capitalist social relations, private property
or the market economy.
Feminist critics of Rawls, such as Susan Moller Okin,[7] largely focused on weakness of Rawls' in
accounting for the injustices and hierarchies embedded in familial relations. Rawls argued that

justice ought only to apply to the "basic structure of society." Feminists, rallying around the
theme of "the personal is political," took Rawls to task for failing to account for injustices found
in patriarchal social relations and the gendered division of labor, especially in the household.
The assumptions of the original position, and in particular, the use of maximin reasoning, have
also been criticized (most notably by Kenneth Arrow[8] and John Harsanyi),[9] with the
implication either that Rawls designed the original position to derive the two principles, or that
an original position more faithful to its initial purpose would not lead to his favored principles. In
reply Rawls has emphasized the role of the original position as a "device of representation" for
making sense of the idea of a fair choice situation for free and equal citizens.[10] Rawls has also
emphasized the relatively modest role that maximin plays in his argument: it is "a useful
heuristic rule of thumb" given the curious features of choice behind the veil of ignorance.[11]
Some egalitarian critics have raised concerns over Rawls' emphasis on primary social goods. For
instance, Amartya Sen has argued that we should attend not only to the distribution of primary
goods, but also how effectively people are able to use those goods to pursue their ends.[12] In a
related vein, Norman Daniels has wondered why healthcare shouldn't be treated as a primary
good,[13] and some of his subsequent work has addressed this question, arguing for a right to
health care within a broadly Rawlsian framework.[14]
Philosopher Allan Bloom, a student of Leo Strauss, criticized Rawls for failing to account for the
existence of natural right in his theory of justice, and wrote that Rawls absolutizes social union
as the ultimate goal which would conventionalize everything into artifice.[15]
Other criticisms of Rawls' theory have come from the philosopher Gerald Cohen. Cohen's series
of influential papers culminated first in his book, If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So
Rich?[16] and then in his later work, Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cohen's criticisms are leveled
against Rawls' avowal of inequality under the difference principle, against his application of the
principle only to social institutions, and against Rawlsian obsession with the using primary goods
as his currency of equality.
Philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, a former student of Rawls',
critiques and attempts to revitalize A Theory of Justice in his 2009 book The Idea of Justice. He
credits Rawls for revitalizing the interest in the ideas of what justice means and the stress put on
fairness, objectivity, equality of opportunity, removal of poverty, and freedom. However, Sen, as
part of his general critique of the contractarian tradition, states that ideas about a perfectly just
world do not help redress actual existing inequality. Sen faults Rawls for an over-emphasis on
institutions as guarantors of justice not considering the effects of human behaviour on the
institutions' ability to maintain a just society. Sen believes Rawls understates the difficulty in
getting everyone in society to adhere to the norms of a just society. Sen also claims that Rawls
position that there be only possible outcome of the reflective equilibrium behind the veil of

ignorance is misguided. Sen believes that multiple conflicting but just principles may arise and
that this undermines the multi-step processes that Rawls laid out as leading to a perfectly just
society.[17]