The British Empiricist

 John Locke (1633-1704)

 English Philosopher
 For him, man is a part of the world but a part which is sensitive to the world
around him.
 Being sensitive, man has ideas about the world which comes through his sense
organs and through experience.
 Man’s reason is established as the ultimate test of everything in the universe.

 George Berkely (1685-1753)

 Placed man as the seat of everything in the universe.
 Our sensation comes to us not from the material objects but from the mind of
God.

 David Hume (1711-1776)

 Scottish Philosopher and Historian
 He made man alone as the center and the whole of the universe.
 He intended to build a science of Man by studying human nature through the
methods of physical science.
 He believed that such a method could lead us to clear understanding of human
nature and the workings of the human mind.

The Age of Reason

 This period is also called the “Age of Enlightenment” which dominated the 18th century
France.

 Baron de la Brede et de Mostesquieu (1689-1755)

 French Philosopher and Jurist
 He claimed that if nature is good, there is no evil; if there is evil then nature cannot itself
be good.

 Francois Maria Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778)

 French philosopher and writer
 He established that nature is the work of God and man, also the product of nature,
not simply God.
 Philosophy is useless if no philosopher has had any influence in the morals of the
street where he lives.

Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778)

-Man is not a machine nor part of the mecahnical universe, he is a thing of feelings and
sentiments.
 -Science has isolated man from nature and man’s salvation lies on his escape from the bonsds of
science and return to nature.

Philosophical Reconstruction of the 19th Century

Emmanuel kant(1724-1804)

-he made man a part of the universe of objects and things.

-man is able to reason and can form ideas of the outer world, of God,freedom and imortality.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrick Hegel(1770-1804)

-man is that pattern of which the universe is the complete realization.

-man is the universe in miniature – a microcosm of that great macrocosm; that is man is a little
universe which is the miniature of the whole universe.

Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860)

-considered all things like puppets.

-intellect is fashioned by the universal will so that the human intellect has the same level as
animals.

-human life is a gift to be enjoyed but a task to be performed.

Auguste Compte (1798-1857)

He looks at man in the universe as affected by its parts in various ways. As

man finds regularities in the relationships between parts of the universe and
himself, he is able to foresee consequences of his actions and happenings among
the parts and to govern his actions to a degree and learn in the light of these
relationships.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

He taught that nature has placed mankind under a governance of two

sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

 Pain- it is caused by something harmful and usually makes one to escape.

 Pleasure- feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction that give the real value of
action
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

He sees man as a very complex being. Man' every action is the result of a
vast number of factors.

Two Concepts

1. Biblical Man- is the highest creature and center of the visible universe and
his end is eternal happiness or sorrow.
2. Philosophical Man- who belongs to the earthly sphere and is a thinking
being.

The Contemporary Period

The Reshaping of the Philosophical Mind

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

He observed a drastic decline in the belief of the Christian God, he
claimed that, God is dead.
He introduced the concept of the Superman.

 Superman-who will represents the highest level in expressing the

physical, intellectual, and emotional.
 THE 20TH CENTURY METAPHYSICIANS

HENRI LOUIE BERGSON (1859-1941)

 He held the world and man as a continuing process of creative evolution.

 Reality—is the expression of the creative vital force of elan vital inherent in all
organisms.
 Elan Vital – immaterial force, whose existence cannot be scientifically verified,
but it provides the vital impulse that continuously shapes all life.

PRAGMATISM

 The most important contribution of American thought to the philosophical

enterprise.
 This is the philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an
ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactory that this is to be found in
the practical consequences of accepting it and unpractical ideas are to be
rejected.

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)

 He stated that the man as the center of the universe. Man’s experience of the
universe is egocentric—centered in his ego.
 Man finds certain consistencies in his experience. His reason is true of the
universe. The universe is the universe of true experience. He interprets them in
terms of his own experience, as well as all his ideas of reality.

JOHN DEWEY (1859-1951)

 For him, man is the measure of the universe which he experiences, but he
cannot get beyond this experience.
 Man is part of the process as he is in the universe, a creation of the evolutionary
process which is found everywhere.
 Man’s experience as the measure of the universe is the only possible measure he
can have for no man can get outside of his experience.
 DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

KARL MARX (1818-1883)

 He stated that there is only one reality which can be discovered as the
embodiment of the rationality in the world.
 He recognizes that history is the process of development and changes from less
to more perfect form in all reality. Theory of history is centered around the idea
that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the
development of human productive power…As the proceeding through a
necessary series of modes of production, culminating in communism.
 He assumed that thoughts and the behavior of man at any given time and place
are caused by operation in them of an identical mind in the spirit of that
particular time in epoch.

MARXISM—affirms materialism that is the primacy of the material and regards

mental activity as by-product of matter.
Matter is the sum total of natural environment, including inorganic
world, organic world, social life and human consciousness.

CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF MATERIALISM:

It recognizes a wide diversity in the material world without reducing it to

any form of matter. The spiritual reality existing outside the mind order is
denied.