Thomas Hobbes

Introduction

 Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) was an English philosopher

of the Age of Reason.
 He was known for his views on how humans could thrive in
harmony while avoiding the threat and fear of societal
conflict.

Early Life and Education

 Uncle of Hobbes', a tradesman and

alderman, provided for Hobbes' education.
 In 1603 Hobbes went to Magdalen Hall in
Oxford to study, he was graduated in 1608.

Career

 In 1608 and became the private tutor

for William Cavendish, the eldest son
of Lord Cavendish of Hardwick (later
known as the first Earl of
Devonshire).
 Hobbes' pupil died in 1628.
 In 1631, while again tutoring a young
Cavendish, Hobbes' philosophy began
to take form.

Hobbes Theories and Philosophy:

Christian Theory

 He also adopted a strongly materialist metaphysics,

which made it difficult to account for God’s existence as a
spiritual entity.
 He claimed there is no natural source of authority to
order our lives, and that human judgment is inherently
unreliable, and therefore needs to be guided.

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New Science of Motion

 In 1640 he fled to Paris because of unrest situation in England.

 He was interested in constructing a mechanical model of the
universe and, after visiting Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), he came
to believe that the entire physical world could be explained by the
new science of motion.
 He further believed that the human body was also understandable

as a dynamic system, as were even the workings of the

mind and the whole of civil society.

Mathematics

 He was influenced by Euclid of Alexandria (Father

of Geometry).
 His mathematical work has been abruptly criticized as
inadequate and improper.

Ethical View

 We have to do depend greatly

on the situation in which we find
ourselves.
 Where political authority
is lacking, our fundamental right is
self-preservation.
 Where political
authority exists, however, our duty is
merely to obey those in power.

Political Philosophy

 He has come to be known as “social contract theory.

 Political legitimacy depends not on how a government came to power, but only on
whether it can effectively protects those who have consented to obey it; political
obligation ends when protection ceases.

 His main concern was to argue that effective government, whatever it’s for, must have
absolute authority.

 Christians' religious duties forbid to absolute obedience to their governors.

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  People are equal because they are all subject to domination, and all potentially capable of
dominating others.

 He maintains that women can be sovereigns; authority for him is “neither male nor
female”.

Leviathan

 In 1651 he returns to England after the

death of King.
 "Leviathan" (subtitled "The Matter, Form
and Power of a Commonwealth,
Ecclesiastical and Civil") of 1651
 Leviathan – Sea Monster
 Human body is like a machine, and that
political organization ("commonwealth") is
like an artificial human being.
 State of nature (pre-government state in
which individuals' actions are bound only
by those individuals' desires and restraints).
 He argued inevitably leads to conflict and
lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short".
 In order to escape this state of war and
insecurity, men in the state of nature accede
to a "social contract" and establish a civil
society.
 All individuals in that society cede their
natural rights for the sake of protection, and
any abuses of power by this authority must
be accepted as the price of peace.

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Illness and Death

 Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, which was

followed by a paralytic stroke.
 He died on 4 December 1679 in Derbyshire, England,
aged 91.

Conclusion

 Hobbes is a person who favors peace instead of war.

 He did not consider himself as atheist, he believed in God but he didn’t believe on the
nature governance of universe by God.
 His political views are major contribution to the western philosophy.

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 Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970)
Introduction

 Born: Bertrand Arthur William Russell,

18 May 1872, Trellech, Monmouthshire,
United Kingdom
 Main interests: Epistemology, Ethics,
Logic, Mathematics, Metaphysics, History
of philosophy, Philosophy of language.
Philosophy of logic, Philosophy of
mathematics, Philosophy of mind,
Philosophy of perception, Philosophy of
religion, Philosophy of science
 Bertrand Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 for his numerous
writings. He is perhaps better known, though, for his political activism.
 A prominent anti-war activist, he has been imprisoned twice by the British government.

Childhood & Early Life

 At the age of three he was left an orphan.

 His father had wished him to be brought up as an agnostic.
 To avoid this he was made a ward of Court, and brought up by his grandmother.
 Instead of being sent to school he was taught by governesses and tutors, and thus
acquired a perfect knowledge of French and German.
 Russell was often struck with pangs of loneliness and seclusion
as a teenager, due to which, he often planned to commit suicide.
 He received no formal education at school and studied at home
only, by different tutors.
 Russell also spent his teenage in denoting a deeper view on
Christianity.
 In 1890 he got scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at
Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

 In 1896, he started teaching German social democracy at the

London School of Economics. Russell was a member of the
“Coefficients Dining Club” of social reformers which was
established by the Fabian campaigners, Sidney and Beatrice
Webb in 1902.
 His first foremost book on mathematical logic got published in
1903 named “The Principles of Mathematics”. The book
revealed that mathematics could be understood from a very small
number of principles and contributed considerably to logicism.

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  In 1905, he completed his essay “On Denoting”, which was later published in the
philosophical journal, Mind.
 In 1908, he became associated with the Royal Society. Also,
Russell and Whitehead together wrote the book “Principia
Mathematica”, whose first three volumes got published in
1910.
 In 1910, he became the lecturer in the University of
Cambridge. In 1918, he lectured on “Logical Atomism”, his
own version on these ideas.

World War I and II

 Russell devoted much of his public effort to matters of general

social concern.
 He was jailed for writing a pacifist pamphlet during the First
World War.
 Russell supported the battle against Fascism during World War II

Philosophy of Russell:
Analytic Philosophy

 He suggested that held that to know any particular thing, we

must know all of its relations.
 He argued that this would make space, time, science and the
concept of number that not fully clear.

Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics

 Russell had great influence on modern mathematical logic.

 His first mathematical book, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, he gave
definition of 0, successor and number.
 He also analyzed the classes of elements that are later on called Theory of Type.
 Logicism is the view that all mathematical concepts can be defined in terms of logical
concepts and that all mathematical truths can be derived from logical truths to show that
mathematics is nothing but logic.

Philosophy of language

 A significant contribution to philosophy of language is Russell's theory of descriptions.

 He argues that the grammatical form of the sentence disguises its underlying logical
form.
 Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions enables the sentence to be construed as
meaningful but false, that which is not must in some sense be.

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Logical Atomism

 "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", which he gave in 1918.

 Knowledge can be reduced to terms of atomic propositions and
their truth-functional compounds.

Epistemology

 Russell believed that our direct

experiences have dominance in the
acquisition of knowledge.
 "Knowledge by acquaintance" and
"knowledge by description"

Philosophy of Science

 Russell was a believer in the scientific method, that science reaches only tentative
answers.
 He held that the ultimate objective of both science and philosophy
was to understand reality, not simply to make predictions.

Ethics

 Russell postulated that ethical propositions should be expressed in

optative mood, not in the indicative.

Religion and Theology

 Religious outlook serve to impede

knowledge, foster fear and dependency,
and are responsible for much of the war,
oppression, and misery that have beset
the world.

Death

 Russell died on February 2, 1970 due to

influenza at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Merionethshire, Wales.
 Bertrand Russell was cremated on 5th February, 1970 in Colwyn Bay.
 According to the will of Russell, no religious ceremony took place on his cremation
 His ashes were later spread over the Welsh mountains.

Conclusion

 Russell is a moral and political philosopher.

 He is a person with peace of mind.
 He was an agnostic and he didn’t believe in Life After Death.

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 Edmund Burke
Introduction

 Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797) was an Anglo-

Irish philosopher, statesman and political theorist of the Age
of Enlightenment.
 He was a strong supporter of the American colonies, and a
staunch opponent of the French Revolution.
 He is often regarded as the philosophical founder of Anglo-
American Conservatism.

Early Life

 Burke’s father, Richard Burke, was a prosperous, professional solicitor.

 His mother, Mary came from a genteel Roman Catholic family of County Cork.
 He was raised in the Church of Ireland.

Education

 Burke early education was at

a Quaker school in Ballitore just south of
Dublin.
 In 1744, he continued his education
at Trinity College, Dublin, where he set up
a debating club, known as Edmund Burke's
Club, and graduated in 1748.
 In 1750, he went to London to study law
at the Middle Temple, but he soon gave up his
legal studies in order to travel in Europe.

Political Life

 He took a leading role in the debate over the constitutional limits to the
executive authority of the King, and directly opposed King George III's policy of severe
sovereignty in relation to the American colonists.
 He campaigned against the persecution of Catholics in Ireland and
denounced the abuses and corruption of the East India Company.
 In 1774 he was elected MP for Bristol, then England's "second
city".
 In 1783, the remainder of Burke's political life was in opposition,
but he distinguished himself in the impeachment of the Indian
governor Warren Hastings (1732 - 1818).
 In 1794, his son Richard died and the Hastings trial came to an end,
and Burke, feeling that his work was done and that he was worn
out, retired from Parliament.

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Philosophy of Burke
Natural Law

 His principles are, in essence, an exploration of the concept of “nature,” or “natural law.”
 He conceived the emotional and spiritual life of man as a harmony within the larger order
of the universe.
 Natural impulse contains within itself such as self-restraint and self-criticism; the moral
and spiritual life is continuous with it, generated from it and essentially sympathetic to it.
 The political community acts ideally as a unity.

Social Change

 Interpretation of nature and the natural order implies deep respect for the historical
process and the usages and social achievements built up over time.
 Social change is not merely possible but also predictable and desirable.

Economics

 He was a strong supporter of the free market system.

 The pioneering economist, Adam Smith, was a
strong supporter of his ground-breaking views.

Religious Thought

 Burke's religious thought was grounded in the belief that

religion is the foundation of civil society.

Anarchism

 Burke's first published work, "A Vindication of Natural

Society" (subtitled "A View of the Miseries and Evils
Arising to Mankind"), appeared in 1756.
 Anarchism asserts that the State lacks moral legitimacy,
that there is no individual obligation or duty to obey the
State and, conversely, that the State has no right to
command individuals.

Death

 After a prolonged illness, Burke died on 9 July 1797 at Beaconsfield.

Conclusion

 Burke is perhaps the least studied of political classics, but he is certainly amongst the
small number with whom anyone who aspires to have an adequate political education
must engage.
 He had more emphasis on traditions and external forces that cause change in the society.

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End Conclusion:
 Russell and Hobbes are skeptic while Burke is believer of God, but they still believe in
power, rules, ethics and moral values.
 Their personal lives didn’t hinder them to contribute to the knowledge. This will motivate
others to go for what you want, what the circumstances are.
 These philosophers believed that human nature is selfish, they fight for their interest but
there should be peace and happiness.
 Their anti-war activist theories had greater influence on younger philosophers. These
philosophers favor scientific methods of science for better governance in the state and
human lives.
 The whole story is concluded by wish for happiness, think with emotions but live with
mind.

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