Modern philosophy
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The philosophy of the early modern period , which replaced the philosophy of the Middle Ages around 1400 and extended to around 1800, is a section of the history of philosophy that is based on the one hand on the new scientific worldview (since Nicolaus Copernicus and Galilei ) and the associated mathematical methods (analytical geometry , Analysis ) was determined; on the other hand, in theory it anticipated the political upheavals that culminated in the French Revolution . Early modern philosophy includes the Renaissance and Humanism , Baroque , Absolutism, and the Enlightenment .
rationalism
The approach of rationalism was in conflict with that of empiricism . The distinction can be formulated as follows: a rationalist bases his philosophical explanation of the world above all on the reasonable conclusion , while an empiricist in his philosophical explanation of the world only accepts hypotheses that can be traced back to sensory perception . However, empirical elements can also be found in the texts of all rationalist philosophers , and vice versa.
René Descartes is considered to be the founder of rationalism . Other thinkers , for example the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , further developed Cartesian rationalism.
The epistemological rationalism was also used in other areas of philosophy. So he believed that the elementary principles of human morality resulted from pure reason.
René Descartes
René Descartes (1596–1650) was a philosopher , mathematician and scientist . He is called the “father of modern philosophy” because he founded modern rationalism . The direction of thought that influenced Descartes is also called Cartesianism .
Descartes first developed his method of philosophical thinking in the Discours de la méthode , in which he lays down rules that one must follow in order to arrive at true knowledge . He is of the opinion that the common assumption that scientific knowledge arises from sensory perception and thinking must be questioned. Our senses often deceived us, for example with optical illusions or with perceptions in dreams . But you shouldn't trust your thinking without checking either, because a demon could affect you in such a way that you come to wrong conclusions and are mistaken. Therefore one must first of all doubt everything. But if I doubt, even in a case where I am mistaken, I cannot doubt that I doubt and that it is me who doubts; d. i.e., I exist as a thinker. The first indubitable sentence is: "I think (= doubt), therefore I am" ( cogito ergo sum ). According to Descartes, it is "necessarily true whenever I pronounce or think it". Descartes then analyzes this doubting ego and defines it as a non-extended, thinking substance: as res cogitans . To gain further knowledge, Descartes assumes that everything is true that can be clearly recognized. To do this, however, it must be certain that H. to prove that God exists in order to ensure the connection to the extended substance, the res extensa .
For Descartes the two substances res extensa and res cogitans are based on themselves; d. that is, they do not need any other reason. The world is divided into a world of objects and a world of thoughts, in body and soul, body and spirit . The res extensa is a physical body, so it has expansion , is divisible, decomposable, destructible, subject to the rules of causality . The res cogitans, on the other hand, is thought itself. It is extensible, indivisible and imperishable. Even in the most radical doubt, thinking can not be separated from the ego. However, this dualism leads to a central problem , namely the question of the connection between these absolutely different sides. With God's questionability, the truth of this connection is radically called into question. Descartes knew this problem and that is why he paid so much attention to the question of God.
The Aristotelian highlighting the organic negated Descartes. Even the human body is described once as a mere “limb machine”, then again as a “ corpse ”. He reduced the living human organism to its mechanics and thus became the founder of modern iatrophysics , in which human models and (tried or imagined) constructions of human automata played an important role.
Thomas Hobbes and his opponent Shaftesbury
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Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English mathematician , state theorist and philosopher . He tries to transfer scientific methods to the philosophy of the state . Accordingly, his philosophy is committed to the method concept of the so-called " mos geometricus ". In the philosophy of the state he founds the state (in an analogy as "artificial man") on a social contract.
According to Hobbes, the state is the only possible solution to ending the state of nature . In the natural state every human being has a right to everything based on his natural right. Because of human desires , which, according to Hobbes, know no limits, there is a war of all against all in the state of nature , bellum omnium contra omnes , in which everyone is threatened by his fellow men, homo homini lupus est (man is man's wolf). The human being is not a "zoon politikon", as in Aristotle , but is characterized by fear and reason and is guided by the "wolfish" in him and not by charity . He is basically selfish. He also denies free will .
The instinct for self-preservation and the desire to lead a better life lead people to give up their natural right to everything and to enter into a social contract. Everyone concludes a contract with everyone else in which he cedes his right to control himself to a third party on condition that the other does the same. This voluntary union leads to an absolutist state. For the sovereign , Hobbes prefers a monarch . At the same time, under his sovereign he does not conclude other forms of government , e.g. B. democracy or oligarchy . Hobbes has nothing in mind with the "modern" separation of powers , executive , legislative and judicial branches are united in the person of the sovereign.
An important antagonist of Thomas Hobbes was the Earl of Shaftesbury . His philosophical significance as an enlightener is based above all on his ethical considerations, with which he primarily aimed to refute Thomas Hobbes and the egoism he taught . Using the methods of empirical psychology , he examined man first as a unit in himself and secondly in the relationships to the larger units of society and mankind.
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a French philosopher , physicist and mathematician . He devoted himself to philosophical and religious questions and gained fame for his attacks on casuistry , a popular method of Catholic thinkers, especially the Jesuits . As a follower of the doctrine of the Jansenists , he spoke in his writings of an infinite distance between God and man and of the inability to influence divine grace .
Pascal's most famous philosophical work was the pensées , a collection of personal thoughts on human suffering and belief in God; they were to serve as the basis and sketch of a large-scale apology of Christianity which he still intended to write. Here you can find Pascal's bet , which is supposed to prove that belief in God is reasonable: “ If God does not exist, you lose nothing if you believe in him; but if God exists, if you don't believe you lose everything. "
Due to his early death, Pascal was unable to complete the planned great apology. He left only notes and fragments, around 1000 pieces of paper in around 60 bundles, on the basis of which in 1670 Jansenist friends obtained an edition entitled Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts on religion and some other topics") has been. This first edition is commendable because the editors - unusual for the epoch - published an unfinished work and thereby tried to make it accessible. However, it is problematic insofar as they did not orientate themselves on the original text, although it was preserved as an autograph, even if only in slip form, but used one of the two copies that the Périers had made of the bundles of notes shortly after Pascal's death. It is even more problematic because the text material received was shortened according to various criteria and, unlike the copy used, which had largely retained the arrangement of the notes and bundles, a new, supposedly more plausible order of the fragments was introduced.
Baruch de Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677) was a rationalist within early modern philosophy . He was also one of the first modern exponents of pantheism and non-normative thinking. In contrast to Descartes , he did not represent a dualistic, but a monistic worldview , in that he sees in everything a single whole, which he calls substance (see neutral monism ).
He held the view that Christianity and Judaism were temporary phenomena. His Tractatus theologico-politicus was banned by the Dutch government in 1674 together with Thomas Hobbes Leviathan . A significant example of Spinoza's argumentation structure is his saying " Ignorantia non est argumentum " .
Spinoza occupies a special position in the history of philosophy. He did not belong to an established philosophical school, nor did he found a new one himself. He was one of the most radical philosophers of the early modern period. His Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata is formulated in a synthetic representation and, as the title suggests, according to the method of Euclid's elements in "basic concepts", "axioms", "theorems", "demonstrations" and "corollaries", whereby it gave the appearance of irrefutable certainty. Spinoza wrote a metaphysics and ethics in the style of a geometry textbook .
Samuel von Pufendorf
Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694) was a German natural law philosopher , historian, and nature and international law teacher at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment . In 1672 Pufendorf published his main work, the "Eight books on the law of nature and peoples" (De iure naturae et gentium). It is the first comprehensive system of natural law in history . Pufendorf orients himself strongly on the philosophical rationalism of Descartes and Spinoza and he transfers their rigor of principles to ethics and politics .
With his legal conception of a secular natural law ( law of reason ) and the advocacy of a uniform international law , Pufendorf had a decisive influence on German, but also European legal and state philosophy in the 18th and 19th centuries and became one of the pioneers of the Enlightenment. However, for him, natural law “agreed with Christian revelation, since both have their origin in God. Under Calvinist rulers, Pufendorf proved himself to be a loyal Lutheran . He wasn't a scout yet. His rationalism affirmed a 'practical, experiential social reason' which, with emphasis on the natural equality of human beings, paved the way for the idea of humanity and human rights ”.
Occasionalism
The occasionalism or Occasionalismus is a doctrine of occasional causes (Latin from occasio , opportunity, occasion) a dualistic response to the mind-body problem , particularly in the 17th century was represented today but practically has no followers.
The central theses of occassionalism are:
- Body and mind have no causal influence on each other.
- God mediates between physical and mental states .
Occasionalism, of which Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) was the main exponent , says that a person's mental states are immaterial and therefore cannot have any influence on the material world. According to this view, every interaction between the physical and mental spheres is only apparent; For example, when people eat (physically) when they feel hungry (mentally) or flee (physically) when they are afraid of something (mentally). Instead of a direct causality, occassionalists assume that rather God registers the mental state and then allows a physical action to follow.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
portrait of Christoph Bernhard Francke , around 1700; Duke Anton Ulrich Museum , Braunschweig
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a scientist , mathematician , diplomat , legal scholar, physicist, historian, librarian and doctor of secular and canon law . He is considered the universal spirit of the 17th century. Leibniz is one of the early Enlightenmentists who laid the foundation for the Enlightenment movement.
Harmony is a defining term in Leibniz's philosophy. He describes harmony as the sum of an infinite number of infinitely small units of force, the so-called monads . These are the original components of the world substance. United by God, they hold the world together. Leibniz further claimed that monads are individuals, that there are no two identical monads, and that every monad has a consciousness . He further asserted that every monad was isolated from the outside and had no interaction with other monads. There are only the monads and their ideas , nothing else. The monads have no effect on one another. Each exists for and of itself. At the beginning of the world God created the monads, which emerged from the primordial monad God, in such a way that, if each one only follows its own laws, they all work together as if they had an effect on one another. So the harmony was fixed from the start. He marks this state with the term “pre-established harmony”. With this he solves the problem of the connection between body and soul.
Leibniz assumed that God created everything out of nothing and everything that God created is good. Since God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, it could not be otherwise. This leads to the conclusion that there is wonderful order everywhere.
Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was an important German polymath , philosopher , lawyer and mathematician . He was one of the most important representatives of natural law . German philosophy owes him above all its terminological foundation; many of the terms he defined, such as “ meaning ”, “ attention ” or “ in itself ” were later adopted into everyday language . Wolff systematized central parts of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's philosophy and shaped the system of rationalism .
Wolff's philosophy is a systematic expression of rationalism, which is fed by various sources, Leibniz, Descartes , the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suarez . Wolff was for a long time primarily ascribed the “systematization” of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's philosophy, whereby differences between Wolff and Leibniz, for example in monadology , should not be overlooked, which Wolff himself emphasized and which more recent research has worked out. The mathematical type of teaching propagated by Wolff and his followers aimed at a strict system when writing a text. In the best case, every single thought should appear with a corresponding explicitly defined sentence category. With this method, which is also referred to as "demonstrative", an optimal comprehensibility of the train of thought should be achieved.
empiricism
Empiricism is an epistemological direction that derives all knowledge from sensory experience .
Empiricism stands in contrast to rationalism , which emphasizes reason as essential for the cognitive process. Empiricism, on the other hand, places the emphasis on experience and sensory perception. Regardless of its philosophical truth content , empiricism as the basis of scientific work is of great importance up to the present day. In addition to abduction , induction, as a typical conclusion of empiricism, forms the foundation of scientific theorizing. As logical empiricism or positivism , empiricism also flowed into modern currents of philosophy.
It was in contrast to the concepts of the British empiricists John Locke and David Hume , who believed that the senses provided fundamental knowledge. In addition, they opposed the skeptics , who believed that it was impossible to obtain reliable knowledge.
John Locke
John Locke (1632–1704) was one of the main exponents of empiricism , the father of modern epistemological criticism and the founder of materialistic sensualism . He was a forerunner of quantity theory and represented the idea of natural law . He rejected the notion of innate ideas and described the initial consciousness as empty like a blank sheet ( tabula rasa ) that is only filled, as it were, through experience .
He explains in his political masterpiece "Two Treatises of Government" (Two Treatises on Government) Freedom, equality and inviolability of person and property to the highest legal protection. The property justifies itself from the right of self-preservation . At Locke, property is initially limited by personal use: You cannot take more from nature than you can use yourself.
Locke developed Thomas Hobbes' theory of the social contract , according to which the relationship between people and government is interpreted as the people's relationship of a free bourgeois owner society . In doing so, he considerably expands the right to resist the government. Like Hobbes, he assumed a kind of natural state , but in contrast to Hobbes he was not of the opinion that man is fundamentally bad, but that he would only become so with the introduction of money.
George Berkeley
George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Irish theologian , empiricist and philosopher of the Enlightenment . Berkeley's most important contribution to philosophy, especially epistemology , is his radical subjective idealism . Berkeley's basic idea is expressed in the sentence esse est percipi , or esse est percipi (vel percipere) ("Being means being perceived [or perceiving]"). According to this, the being of a thing is synonymous with its being perceived. For Berkeley, only perceptions and perceiving subjects exist. He considers an external world independent of human perception to be a contradiction in terms because it is neither recognizable, nor demonstrable, nor qualitatively describable. According to Berkeley, such "empty" terms have no place in philosophy. This also applies to the terms " absolute space " and " absolute time " in Isaac Newton's natural science .
Since Berkeley assumed that the world is nothing more than a phenomenon of human consciousness, a consequence of his considerations is that the world depends on its observer. The ideas in which we participate thanks to our souls are, in his view, due to the divine spirit.
In 1710 George Berkeley published his second philosophical work “A treatise on the principles of human knowledge ” at the age of 25 - following the “Experiment on a New Theory of Vision ” (1709) . In this book he explained the two basic principles of his sensualistic approach: “There is something that is perceived ” (esse est percipi) and “There is something that percipere” (esse est percipere). He also described his conclusions from these principles with regard to the still prevalent Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy and criticized Locke , whose philosophy dominated the teaching canon at Trinity College. Human conceptions ('ideas') arise exclusively through sensory perception (a basic principle). That which perceives - the other basic principle - is what he called " subject ", " mind ", " spirit ", " soul " and, using a more modern expression, "myself".
Francis Hutcheson
Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) was a philosopher of the (Scottish) Enlightenment and a (pre-) classical economist . Born in Ireland, he comes from an (Ulster) Scottish Presbyterian family.
The work of the early Enlightenment was concerned with ethics and economics. It can be counted as part of the pre-classical economy. He was much more influential as a philosopher of ethics, as a logician and epistemologist. His ethics were prepared in Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) and continued in An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations upon the Moral Sense (1728). His main work is the System of Moral Philosophy, published posthumously in 1755 .
Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury , opposed the psychological selfishness on which Thomas Hobbes had relied. Rather, he suggested that feelings of generosity and compassion were predominant. A morally good act is one that is motivated by the desire to love one's neighbor; yes, the larger the sphere of influence of the action (the welfare of humanity), the higher it should be classified. With the expression "greatest happiness for the greatest number" [of people] he anticipated a key point of the utilitarianism of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham .
David Hume
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher , economist and historian . In the style of John Locke and George Berkeley , he viewed the being of things as an insubstantial sequence of phenomena in consciousness , which - in contrast to Berkeley - does not have a reality that is detached from ideas . The soul or the ego are also without substance, but a bundle of changing and therefore inconsistent ideas and feelings. In metaethics , the law named after him is known, according to which one cannot prove moral demands (“ought”) from descriptions of the world (“being”).
Hume put people at the center of his philosophizing. He assumed that people were born to act and think . Therefore, with his philosophy, he developed a framework of basic assumptions that provided explanations and instructions for human action and thinking. He called these basic assumptions 'principles' . These are rules , or regular processes, which for Hume were not given to humans as eternal laws , but were found by humans for other humans. The results of his philosophy - this is how Hume imagined it - should have a positive effect on society and fundamentally change the sciences.
From his 'principles' of the 'Human Understanding' he concluded that human knowledge of cultural habit ( custom ) is assessed. The term 'human understanding' therefore referred to the 'interpretation of the world by people' and not 'human understanding', as the tradition of German translations assumes. ' Understanding ', ' reason ', ' will ' and other metaphysical terms were replaced by observable activities or processes . Hume found the basis for his new philosophy by looking at anatomy or physiology , human behavior and his own thinking. His considerations and conclusions ( reasonings ) were the content of his philosophizing.
Adam Smith
Adam Smith (1723–1790), was a Scottish moral philosopher and enlightener and is considered to be the founder of classical economics . Smith's impact on economics was astounding. His subjects were the role of the division of labor and the role of the free market , the issues of distribution , foreign trade and the role of the state .
Smith's lectures in moral philosophy formed the basis for the publication of his main philosophical work The Theory of Ethical Emotions in 1759 . In it he describes the sympathy for fellow human beings as the basis of morality and as the mainspring of human work .
1776, the first edition was published his famous economic magnum opus The Wealth of Nations - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (Original title: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ) on which he had worked since his trip to France. The appearance of this book is seen as the birth of English economics, as the economic writings published before Smith were not considered scientific because they were written from the perspective of the state (cameralistic) or certain economic operators (e.g. handbooks for merchants). Some economists see a contradiction between the two works, which is addressed as the Adam Smith problem in the economic literature.
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham is considered to be the founder of classical utilitarianism . He was one of the most important social reformers in England in the 19th century and a pioneer of the modern welfare state. He called for general elections, women's suffrage , the abolition of the death penalty , animal rights , the legalization of all sexual preferences ( homosexuality , pederasty , sodomy ) and freedom of the press . He is considered a pioneer of feminism , a pioneer of democracy , liberalism and the rule of law . But Bentham is also known for his sharp criticism of the French declaration of human rights and his advocacy of usury . He also provided arguments for the legitimate use of torture and developed the Panoptikum, a model prison that Michel Foucault chose as a symbol for the structures of surveillance and rule in modern civil society.
The greatest happiness of the greatest number (greatest happiness principle) is the guiding principle of Bentham's utilitarian ethics . An action is judged solely on the basis of its social consequences: it is morally correct if it benefits the general public (or the greatest number); it turns out to be morally wrong if it harms the general public. In this sense the utilitarian ethic is consequentialist ; d. H. Inner motives do not play an independent role in evaluating an action. The principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number includes the demand for equality, understood as equal consideration of happiness in the evaluation of the consequences of actions.
Enlightenment in France
The Enlightenment is a rationalist emancipation movement of the bourgeoisie . The basis for this is the knowledge of humanism , the Reformation and rationalist philosophy. Reason becomes the basis of all knowledge and the yardstick for all human action. The Enlightenment strongly criticizes the divine right and the sole rule of the monarch . It calls for human rights and takes an opposing position towards the Christian church. Enlightenment advocates demand the restoration of undeformed natural ways of life, the separation of powers and the right to have a say, especially for the bourgeoisie. A so-called social contract and constitutions are intended to safeguard these rights .
Montesquieu
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède de Montesquieu, known under the name Montesquieu (1689–1755), was a French writer , philosopher and state theorist of the Enlightenment . He is considered a forerunner of sociology , an important political philosopher and co-founder of modern history .
Although the moderate pioneer of the Enlightenment was also a successful fiction writer for his contemporaries , he went down in intellectual history primarily as a historico-philosophical and state-theoretical thinker and still influences current debates today .
The principle of the separation of powers found its first expression in 1755 in the constitution of the short-lived republic of Corsica under Pascal Paoli , which went under in 1769 after France had bought the island of Genoa and subjugated it militarily. To this day, however, it was used in the constitution of the United States of America , which came into force in 1787, but not in the French constitution of 1791 . Today, at least in principle, the separation of powers has been achieved in all democratic states.
Voltaire
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Voltaire (1694–1778) was a French philosopher and writer . He is one of the most widely read and influential authors of the French and European Enlightenment .
In France, the 18th century is also called "the century of Voltaire" ( le siècle de Voltaire ) . As a poet, playwright and epic poet, he wrote primarily for an audience of educated French people, as a narrator and philosopher for the entire European upper class in the Age of Enlightenment, whose members usually mastered the French language and read some of the original French works. Many of his works saw several editions in quick succession and were often immediately translated into other European languages. Voltaire had an excellent knowledge of the English and Italian languages and published some texts therein. He spent a considerable part of his life outside France and knew the Netherlands, England, Germany and Switzerland from personal experience.
With his criticism of the abuses of absolutism and feudal rule as well as the ideological monopoly of the Catholic Church , Voltaire was a pioneer of the Enlightenment and an important pioneer of the French Revolution . In presenting and defending what he believed to be right, he showed extensive knowledge and empathy for the ideas of his contemporary readers. His precise and generally understandable style, his often sarcastic wit and his art of irony are often considered unsurpassed.
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a French writer , translator , philosopher , enlightener , literary and art theorist , art agent for the Russian Tsarina Catherine II, and one of the most important organizers and authors of the Encyclopédie .
Together with Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert , he was the editor of the great French encyclopédie , to which he himself contributed about 6000 of a total of 72,000 articles as an encyclopedia . As an author of stage works, he played a major role in the development of bourgeois drama . His novels and stories - mostly published posthumously such as La Religieuse , Jacques le fataliste or Le Neveu de Rameau - made their contribution in various ways to the major issues of the (French) Enlightenment , such as questions of human self-determination, the body -Soul problem and the opposition between determinism and free will as well as criticism of religion .
In his works a clear development from a theistic to a deistic to an atheistic attitude can be seen. But there are also indications that his materialistic and atheistic ideas already existed in his early works, e.g. B. in the Pensées philosophiques (1746). Diderot's attitude, which relates to the experience of individual sensory impressions or perceptions , can be classified under the category of the term sensualism .
In his later works, Diderot advocated the popularization of the spirit of the Enlightenment, of atheism and against the superstition and bigotry that he saw as widespread . Diderot and his comrades-in-arms, the philosophes , no longer left the religious institutions and various agencies with the sole power of interpretation and interpretation over the world and the sciences . Thus, there was less space for belief in supernatural and irrational forces in Enlightenment-influenced Europe and in North and South America.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was a French writer , philosopher, and political theorist. He blames the society of his time for the fact that mankind has lost its natural strengths. It is for the sole purpose , ownership and power of property owners to secure. However, property leads to inequality and bondage. He demands that "uncertainty, innocence and poverty" should be restored to people so that they can be freed from the evils of civilizational and scientific progress .
Unlike many other contemporary writers, Rousseau does not appeal to reason. Rather, he wants to get people to trust their instinct again . All the evils found in the world are due to actions that have been influenced by anti-natural moral reflection .
Rousseau asks the fundamental question of how a naturally free individual can satisfy his needs without at the same time destroying the basis of coexistence through his blind, egoistic behavior. He resolves this paradox through the conceptual construction of an a priori common will of the people : The “ volonté générale ” is based on the general good, not on that of the individual. In an original social contract , individuals relinquish their natural freedom to a religiously exaggerated state that executes the general will. This is the only way to prevent individuals from placing their natural freedom above that of others and thereby dominating it. The common good is guaranteed by the good of the mere individual existence being subordinated to the good of the people as a whole.
Enlightenment in Germany
In addition to England and France , the Enlightenment also experienced its special form in Germany, corresponding to its German character and historical situation. On the whole, especially in relation to religion , it is much less radical than the French. This is of course related to the social situation in Germany at the time , where, as is well known, the Enlightenment of the 18th century did not lead to a general upheaval comparable to the French Revolution .
Friedrich II of Prussia
Friedrich II. Or Frederick the Great (1712–1786), popularly also the Old Fritz , was King in 1740 and King of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1772 . He came from the Hohenzollern dynasty .
The three Silesian Wars he waged against Austria for possession of Silesia led to German dualism . After the last of these wars, the Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1763, Prussia was recognized as the fifth major power in the European pentarchy alongside France , Great Britain , Austria and Russia . Friedrich is considered a representative of enlightened absolutism . He described himself as “the first servant of the state”.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) was an important poet of the German Enlightenment . With his dramas and his theoretical writings, which are primarily committed to the notion of tolerance , this enlightener has shown the further development of theater a significant path and has had a lasting impact on the public impact of literature . Lessing is the first German playwright whose work has been continuously performed in theaters to this day.
Lessing was a versatile poet, thinker and critic. As a leading representative of the German Enlightenment, he became a pioneer for the new self-confidence of the bourgeoisie . His theoretical and critical writings are characterized by an often witty and ironic style and accurate polemics . The stylistic device of the dialogue met his intention to always look at a matter from several sides and also to look for traces of truth in the arguments of his counterpart. This never appeared to him as something solid that one could own, but always as a process of approaching.
The idea of freedom - for the theater against the dominance of the French model, for religion by the dogma of the church - runs like a red thread through his whole life. Logically, he also campaigned for the liberation of the aspiring bourgeoisie from the patronage of the nobility. In his own literary existence, he also always strived for independence. His ideal of a life as a freelance writer was difficult to enforce against economic constraints. In Hamburg, for example, the “Deutsches Museum” project that he tried to carry out in 1768 with Johann Christoph Bode failed .
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was a German philosopher of the Enlightenment and is considered a pioneer of the Haskalah .
Mendelssohn showed an inclination towards philosophy early on; he first studied the English early Enlightenment John Locke in Latin with the help of a dictionary, as well as Christian Wolff and the universal scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . Also Shaftesbury Think spoke to him while he most French Enlightenment, except for Rousseau , met skeptically. Soon he became a scout himself .
Friedrich Nicolai
Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, (1733-1811) was a German writer, publisher , critic , writer of satirical novels and travelogues, regional historian, main representative of the Berlin Enlightenment , friend of Lessing , Zelter and Mendelssohn , opponent of Kant and Fichte .
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is considered one of the most important philosophers . With his critical approach ( Sapere aude ) Kant is probably the most important thinker of the German Enlightenment. Usually a distinction is made between the pre-critical and the critical phase in his philosophical path, because his position changes considerably with the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason at the latest . Until the 1960s, Kant can be attributed to rationalism in the succession of Leibniz and Wolff. In the time that followed, Kant worked out his new epistemology , known as Criticism and still widely discussed today . Only after eleven years of intensive work was it published in 1781 in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The Critique of Pure Reason (KrV), in which Kant sets out his epistemology, is a discussion on the one hand with the rationalist and on the other hand with the empirical philosophy of the 18th century, which were irreconcilably opposed to each other before Kant. At the same time, the KrV will deal with traditional metaphysics . For Kant it was a philosophy scandal that it had not yet been possible to free metaphysics from speculation.
For Kant, knowledge takes place linguistically through judgments (statements that contain a subject and a predicate) and thus brought a connection to people's thinking. In these judgments, the empirical views of sensuality are combined with the ideas of the understanding (synthesis). Sensuality and understanding are the two only, equal and interdependent sources of knowledge. "Thoughts without content are empty, views without concepts are blind."
How do empirical views come about? On the one hand, we have an external sense that gives us ideas in space. We, on the other hand, have an inner sense with which we create ideas in time. Space and time are prerequisites for knowledge. At the same time, our senses are receptive, ie they are affected by a conceptually incomprehensible outside world (“the thing in itself”). Now comes Kant's famous Copernican turn: we do not recognize the thing in itself , but only its appearance . But this appearance is shaped by us as a subject , by our understanding . The sensual perception is transformed in our brain into what appears to us. Such empirical views, composed of individual elements and transformed in the brain, are what Kant calls sensations . But space and time are added to sensations (matter) as pure forms of sensual perception. This means that knowledge is always dependent on the subject. Our reality are the appearances, ie everything that is in space and time. We cannot know whether space and time exist in things in themselves.
But sensations alone do not lead to concepts . The concepts come from the mind, which spontaneously forms them according to rules through the productive imagination . This requires transcendental self-awareness as the basis of all thinking. The pure consciousness, that is, abstracted from all sensory perceptions, of “I think”, which can also be described as the self-ascription of the mental , is the pivot of Kant's epistemology. This self-awareness is the origin of pure intellectual concepts, the categories. Quantity , quality , relation and modality are the four functions of the mind according to which categories are formed. On the basis of the categories, the mind connects the sensations with the help of judgment (the ability to subsume under rules) according to so-called schemes. A scheme is the general process of the imagination to form a picture of a concept.
After it has been described how knowledge is possible at all, Kant's fundamental question now comes, whether we can make statements that justify the scientific nature of metaphysics. Are there statements based purely on intellectual considerations that increase our knowledge in terms of content? Kant's answer is "yes". We can gain synthetic knowledge a priori through the categories. So are z. B. under the concept of relation the categories of substance , causality and interaction . The following can be seen from the paradigmatic example of causality: In our sensory perception we recognize two sequential phenomena. Their connection as cause and effect eludes our perception. Causality is thought of by us and that with generality and necessity .
How do metaphysical theories come about? This is a question of reason , which denotes that part of the mind with which we draw inferences from concepts and judgments. It is in the nature of reason that it strives for ever greater knowledge and in the end tries to recognize the unconditioned or absolute. But then reason leaves the ground of sensual knowledge and enters the realm of speculation . In doing so, it necessarily brings about the three transcendental ideas immortality ( soul ), freedom ( cosmos ) and infinity ( God ). Kant now shows in dialectics as the science of appearance that the existence of these regulative principles can neither be proven nor refuted. With this one can believe in God, many have tried to prove it, but all proofs of God must ultimately fail.
In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (GMS) and more fully formulated in the Critique of Practical Reason (KpV), Kant examines the conditions of the possibility of statements of shoulders. His theoretical considerations on ethics consist of three elements: the morally good, the acceptance of freedom of will and the general maxim of the categorical imperative . Kant's ethics is an ethic of duty . Kant takes the concrete formulation of his ethics in the metaphysics of morals .
literature
- Karl Vorländer : History of Philosophy. Vol. 3: Herbert Schnädelbach (Ed.): Modern times to Kant. Part 1: 17th century. Part 2: Education. Part 3: Kant in one volume. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-499-55494-1
- Emerich Coreth , Harald Schöndorf : Philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. 3rd edition Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-17-015973-9
- Sicco Lehmann-Brauns: Wisdom in World History. History of philosophy between the Baroque and the Enlightenment. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-484-36599-4
- Martin Schneider: The world view of the 17th century. Philosophical thinking between the Reformation and the Enlightenment. WBG, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-15764-8
- Ernst Cassirer: The Philosophy of Enlightenment. Meiner, Hamburg 1998. ISBN 978-3-7873-1362-4
Web links
- Karl Vorländer : History of Philosophy (1902)
- Martin Mulsow: Early modern philosophical research , information philosophy online
- Pure Reason - The Philosophy of Rationalism (Audio)
- Empiricism - The World as Experience (Audio)
- Reason as Truth - The Age of Enlightenment (Audio)
Individual evidence
- ↑ James Steintrager: Bentham ( Political Thinkers Volume V ). London 2004, p. 12 f.
- ↑ Diderot, Denis. (No longer available online.) In: Die Brockhaus Enzyklopädie Online . January 1, 2012, formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 18, 2016 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ F. Venturi: Jeunesse de Diderot. 1939, p. 12.
- ↑ U. Winter: The materialism in Diderot. 1972, p. 8.
- ↑ Cordula Neis: Anthropology in language thinking in the 18th century: the Berlin price question about the origin of language (1771). (= Studia linguistica Germanica. Volume 67). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-11-017518-5 , p. 63.
- ↑ The term " sensualism " was used for the first time in 1804 by the French Joseph Marie Degérando in his history of philosophy. He used it to describe modern epistemology that understood physical sensation as the origin of all thought and action. As a result, the term “sensualism” was used as a philosophy-historical category and also applied to comparable points of view of ancient philosophers. Sensualism was a particularly influential enlightenment tendency in England in the 17th century . Based on this, however, it is also a philosophical direction native to France.
- ↑ Manfred Geier: Enlightenment. The European project. Reinbek b. Hamburg 2012, p. 179 ff.
