George Berkeley (1685-1753)

George Berkeley was born on 12th of March 1685 and died 14th of January
1753 known as Bishop Berkeley or Bishop of Cloyne, was an Irish
philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory
he called "immaterialism" later referred to as "subjective idealism" by
others. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important
premise in his argument for immaterialism. Berkeley was the namesake of
the city of Berkeley, California, which is most famous as the home of the
University of California, Berkeley.

Philosophical Content: metaphysics, epistemology, perception, mathematics, Christianity

“All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a world, all those bodies which compose
the frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind”

Explanation:
The theory “Immaterialism” or “subjective Idealism” of George Berkeley denies the
existence of material substance and instead it deals that familiar objects like tables and chairs
are only ideas in the minds of perceivers and, as a result, cannot exist without being
perceived. In Immaterialism, Common sense dictates that there are only two crucial elements
involved in perception, the perceiver and what is perceived. All we need to do, Berkeley
argued, is eliminate the absurd, philosophically conceived third element in the picture, that is,
we must acknowledge that there are no material objects. For Berkeley, only the ideas we
directly perceive are real.
As Berkeley correctly noticed, our experience is always of concrete particulars. When
I contemplate the idea of "triangle," the image that comes to mind is that of some determinate
shape; having the abstract image of a three-sided figure that is neither equilateral nor isoceles
nor scalene is simply impossible. It is unnecessary too but for purposes of geometrical
reasoning, any particular image can be used as a representative for all. there is no material
substance ant that things, such as stones and tables, are collections of “ideas” or sensations,
which can exist only in minds and for so long as they are perceived.
 Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Jeremy Bentham was born on 15th of February 1748 and died on 6th of June
1832. He was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded
as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the
"fundamental axiom" of his philosophy. He became a leading theorist in
Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas
influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and
economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of
expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the
decriminalising of homosexual acts.

Philosophical content: Political philosophy, philosophy of law, ethics, economics

“The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of
right and wrong”

Explanation:
Jeremy Bentham is more about truth, equality, and justice. He is very good at political
Philosophy and the philosophy of law that is why He called for the abolition of slavery,
capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become
known as an early advocate of animal rights. Though strongly in favour of the extension of
individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights both of which are
considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin, calling them "nonsense upon stilts".
The "greatest happiness principle", or the principle of utility, forms the cornerstone of
all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over
"pain". He wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation, Nature has placed mankind
under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to
point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the
standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their
throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think
 Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was born on 8th of April 1859 and died
on 27th of April 1938. He was a German philosopher who established the
school of phenomenology. Husserl studied mathematics under the tutelage
of Karl Weierstrass and Leo Königsberger, and philosophy under Franz
Brentano and Carl Stumpf. He taught philosophy as a Privatdozent at Halle
from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg
from 1916 until he retired in 1928, after which he remained highly
productive. Following an illness, he died in Freiburg in 1938.

Philosophical content: Epistemology, ontology, philosophy of mathematics,

intersubjectivity

“To begin with, we put the proposition, pure phenomenology is the science of pure
consciousness.”

Explanation:
Husserl elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic based on
analyses of intentionality. In his mature work, he sought to develop a systematic foundational
science based on the so-called phenomenological reduction. Arguing that transcendental
consciousness sets the limits of all possible knowledge, Husserl redefined phenomenology as
a transcendental-idealist philosophy. Husserl's thought profoundly influenced the landscape
of 20th-century philosophy, and he remains a notable figure in contemporary philosophy and
beyond.
In his first works Husserl tries to combine mathematics, psychology and philosophy
with a main goal to provide a sound foundation for mathematics. He analyzes the
psychological process needed to obtain the concept of number and then tries to build up a
systematical theory on this analysis. To achieve this he uses several methods and concepts
taken from his teachers. In an example Husserl explains this in the following way: if you are
standing in front of a house, you have a proper, direct presentation of that house, but if you
are looking for it and ask for directions, then these directions are an indirect, improper
presentation.