Marx today

Today, Marx is studied as both a revolutionary and an economist. People realize his importance as a pioneer in the social sciences. Marx has often been attacked because he rebelled against all established societies, because he was an arrogant writer who scorned his critics, and because of his radical views.

As the founder of the Communist movement, Marx is regarded by Communists as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. Many Communists believe his writings are the source of all important truths in social science and philosophy. They believe a person cannot be an intelligent student of society, history, economics, philosophy, and many other fields without studying Marx or his principal disciples.

Scholars in the Western world were slow to recognize the importance of Marx. For many years, few Americans bothered to study his writings. But today, in a variety of fields, it has become essential to have some knowledge of Marx. One of these fields is economics. Although his methods of analyzing capitalism are considered old-fashioned, many scholars recognize the brilliance of this analysis. Many people consider his criticism of capitalism and his view of what humanity has made of the world as timely today as they were 100 years ago. Even the analysis that Marx made of the business cycle is studied as one of the many explanations of inflation and depression.

In sociology, Marx's work is also regarded with respect. Without his contributions, sociology would not have developed into what it is today. Marx did pioneering work in many areas with which sociology deals. He wrote on social classes, on the relationship between the economy and the state, and on the principles that underlie a political or economic system.

Some people still turn to Marx for an explanation of current social, economic, and political evils. But most of them are unlikely to agree with his view of the ease with which workers will overthrow the class system and establish a Communist society.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, (1844-1900), was a German philosopher and classical scholar. He deeply influenced many philosophers, artists, and psychologists of the 1900's.

Classical scholarship. Nietzsche's first book was The Birth of Tragedy (1872). It presented a new theory of the origins of classical Greek culture. Nietzsche believed that Greek culture could best be understood as resulting from a conflict between two basic human drives, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian was represented by Apollo, the god of the sun. The Dionysian was represented by Dionysus, the god of wine and intoxication.

The Apollonian is a drive to create clarity and order. It is a desire for a world in which everything possesses a clear identity and can be distinguished from other things. The Apollonian tendency finds expression in the visual arts, where each form stands out clearly from other forms. Nietzsche argued that, in reality, the world lacks any clear distinctions, that it is confused, chaotic, and cruel. The Apollonian drive tries to redeem the horrors of the real world by giving it the illusion of order and beauty, thus making it tolerable.

The Dionysian is a drive that tries to rip apart Apollonian illusions and reveal the reality that lies behind them. This revelation takes place only in special states of ecstasy or religious frenzy induced by drinking, wild music, and sexual license.

Nietzsche and religion. Nietzsche was a severe critic of religion, especially Christianity. In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883 to 1885), he proclaimed that "God is dead." This was his dramatic way of saying that most people no longer believed in God. Thus, religion could no longer serve as the foundation for moral values.

Nietzsche believed that the time had come to examine traditional values critically. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and The Genealogy of Morals (1887), he examined the origins of our moral systems. He argued that the warriors who dominated earlier societies had defined their own strength as "good" and the weakness of the common people they dominated as "bad." Nietzsche called this "master morality" because it represented the values of the masters.

Later, the priests and common people, who wanted to take power, defined their own weakness and humility as "good." They called the aggressive strength of the warriors "evil." Nietzsche identified these values, which he called "slave morality," with the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition that dominates Western culture. He criticized these values as being expressions of the fear and resentment of the weak against the strong.

Psychological ideas. Nietzsche's major psychological theory states that all human behavior is inspired by a "will to power." He wanted to disprove and replace a common prevalent psychological theory that was known as hedonism. Hedonism holds that human behavior is inspired by a desire to experience pleasure and avoid pain. Nietzsche argued that people are frequently willing to increase their pain, strain, or tension to accomplish tasks that allow them to feel power, competence, or strength.

Nietzsche did not mean that people wanted only to dominate each other, nor that they were only interested in physical or political power. He wrote that we also want to gain power over our unruly drives and instincts. He thought that the self-control exhibited by artists and people who practice self-denial for religious reasons was actually a higher form of power than the physical bullying of the weak by the strong.

Nietzsce's ideal was the overman (or superman), a passionate individual who learns to control his or her passions and use them in a creative manner. This superior human being channels the energy of instinctual drives into higher, more creative, and less objectionable forms. Nietzsche believed that such "sublimation" of energy is far more valuable than the suppression of the instincts urged by Christianity and other religions.

His life. Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Saxony, near present-day Leipzig, Germany. He was a professor of classics at the University of Basel in Switzerland from 1868 to 1878, when he retired because of poor health. He then devoted himself to writing. In 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. Nietzsche is often wrongly considered a racist, anti-Semite, and forerunner of Nazism. These charges are largely the result of distortions of his ideas by his sister, Elisabeth, and by Nazi propagandists after his death.

Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), an English philosopher, founded the philosophy known as utilitarianism. He thought that ideas, institutions, and actions should be judged on the basis of their utility (usefulness).

Bentham defined utility as the ability to produce happiness. He advocated the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness in and for society. Bentham thought of happiness and good in terms of pleasure. He believed that (1) pleasure can be exactly measured, (2) individuals care only about increasing their own pleasure and decreasing their pain, and (3) a person should always do what will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Bentham set up a number of principles for measuring pleasure. He also sought an opportunity to organize a country's laws and institutions in such a way that they would place the general good above each person's individual pleasure.

His criticisms brought about many needed reforms. For example, in Britain the law courts were reformed because they had not promoted the good of all.

Bentham's writings include Fragment on Government (1776) and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). He was born in London. Bentham graduated from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1763.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) became the leader of the utilitarian movement. Mill was one of the most advanced thinkers of his time. He tried to help the English working people by promoting measures leading to a more equal division of profits. He favored a cooperative system of agriculture and increased rights for women. He served as editor of the Westminster Review from 1835 to 1840 and wrote many articles on economics.

His greatest philosophical work, System of Logic (1843), ranks with Aristotle's work in that field. Mill applied economic principles to social conditions in Principles of Political Economy (1848). His other works include Utilitarianism (1863), On Liberty (1859), The Subjection of Women (1869), and Autobiography (1873).

Mill was born in London and was educated by his father. By the age of 14, he had mastered Latin, classical literature, logic, political economy, history, and mathematics. He entered the East India Company as a clerk at 17. Like his father, he became director of the company. Mill was elected to Parliament in 1865.

Mill was the family name of three British writers--father, son, and the son's wife. They won distinction in philosophy, history, psychology, and economics.

James Mill (1773-1836) established his reputation as a writer with the publication of A History of British India (1817). This work was partly responsible for changes in the Indian government. It also won him a job with the East India Company in 1819. He headed the company from 1830 until his death.

In 1808, Mill met Jeremy Bentham, a political economist called the father of utilitarianism. The utilitarians believed that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the sole purpose of all public action. Mill adopted the utilitarian philosophy and became Bentham's ardent disciple and the editor of St. James's Chronicle.

His writings helped clarify the philosophical and psychological basis of utilitarianism. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) is a study of psychology. He wrote Elements of Political Economy (1821) for his son, and it became the first textbook of English economics.

In Fragment on Mackintosh (1835), he states his views of utility as the basis of morals.

Mill was born in Scotland and graduated from Edinburgh University, where he studied for the ministry. He became a Presbyterian minister in 1798 but left the ministry in 1802 to become a journalist.

Harriet Taylor Mill (1807-1858) was the wife of John Stuart Mill and helped him write many of his works. She called for increased rights for women and workers and greatly influenced Mill's writings in these areas.

Many of John Stuart Mill's writings probably originated from discussions with Harriet. She helped him write Principles of Political Economy. Some scholars also consider her the coauthor of On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Autobiography, all of which were published after her death. But only the essay "Enfranchisement of Women" bears her name. It appears in her husband's Discussions and Dissertations, a four-volume work published from 1859 to 1875. In the introduction to On Liberty, he calls Harriet "the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings."

She was born Harriet Hardy in Walworth, near Durham, England. In 1826, she married John Taylor, a merchant. Harriet met John Stuart Mill about 1830, and they became close friends. Taylor died in 1849, and she married Mill in 1851.

Sartre, Jean-Paul, (1905-1980), was a French existentialist philosopher who expressed his ideas in novels, plays, and short stories, as well as in theoretical works.

The bare existence of things, especially his own existence, fascinated and horrified Sartre, because there seems to be no reason why anything should exist. In his first novel, Nausea (1938), he described the horror and mystery which a man experiences when he considers the unexplainable fact of a thing's existence.

In his chief philosophical work, Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre investigated the nature and forms of existence or being. He claimed that human existence, which he called "being-for-itself," is radically different from the existence of such inanimate objects as tables, which he called "being-in-itself." Sartre said that only human existence is conscious of itself and of other things. He argued that inanimate objects simply are what they are; however, people are whatever they choose to be. Sartre said that a person is not a coward, for example, in the same simple way that a table is only a table. A person is a coward only by choice. Sartre said that a person, unlike a table, has no fixed character or "essence" that has been assigned. Primarily, people "exist" as beings who must choose their own character or "essence." Thus, in his essay Existentialism and Humanism (1946), he defined existentialism as the doctrine that, for humankind, "existence precedes essence".

Sartre believed that people are completely free, but are afraid to recognize this freedom and to accept full responsibility for their behavior, which such freedom implies. Thus, people tend to deceive themselves about their true situation. Throughout his philosophical and literary works, Sartre examined and analyzed the varied and subtle forms of self-deception.

Sartre criticized Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of human behavior and offered his own "existential psychoanalysis". Sartre said the ultimate motive for all human behavior is the desire to achieve perfect self-sufficiency by becoming the cause of one's own existence. However, he argued that this goal is self-contradictory and impossible to attain. Therefore, he considered all human activity ultimately futile. As Sartre said: "Man is a useless passion." He identified this idea of perfectly self-sufficient beings who are the cause of their own existence as the traditional idea of God. According to Sartre, each of us wants to become God, and God cannot possibly exist. In the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1964), Sartre presented his political and sociological theories, which he considered to be a form of Marxism.

Sartre's plays include The Flies (1943), No Exit (1944), Dirty Hands (1948), and The Condemned of Altona (1959). He wrote The Roads of Freedom, a sequence of novels including The Age of Reason (1945), The Reprieve (1945), and Troubled Sleep (1949). He applied his psychoanalytic theories in his biographies, Baudelaire (1947), Saint Genet (1953), and Flaubert (1971). Words (1963) is an autobiographical account of his youth.

Sartre was born in Paris where he studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure. During World War II (1939-1945), he fought in the French Army and was active in the French resistance movement. Sartre founded the monthly review Les Temps Modernes in 1945 and served as its editor. In 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. However, he refused to accept the award.

Edmund Husserl, (1859–1938) a German philosopher not usually considered an existentialist but the founder of his own movement, phenomenology, was nevertheless one of the greatest influences on existentialism.

Phenomenology was developed in the early 1900's. Husserl wanted to understand how consciousness works in order to better understand human experience. Consciousness refers to the power of the mind to be aware of acts, sensations, and emotions. Husserl believed that everything we know about reality derives from our consciousness.

For phenomenologists, experience has two parts. The first part consists of objects of consciousness (the things of which one is conscious). Objects of consciousness, which include material objects, ideas, and wishes, are called phenomena. The second part of experience consists of acts of consciousness, such as perceiving, believing, thinking, and desiring. Phenomenologists believe that all acts of consciousness are related to objects of consciousness and thus must also be considered phenomena. This relationship is called intentionality.

The phenomenological method starts with the theory that people normally make certain assumptions about their experiences. They consider the things they have been taught, and remember past experiences. Such presuppositions limit their experiencing of phenomena. Phenomenologists realize that it is impossible to entirely eliminate these presuppositions from the mind. Instead, they try to expand their experiencing of phenomena by dealing with the presuppositions critically. One critical method involves fantasy variations. The philosopher varies the presuppositions, imagining how the experience would be perceived under varying circumstances. The features of the experience that remain constant despite the variations are considered its essence.

Husserl has had many followers. They include the French psychologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Both men argued that phenomenology should not be limited to an analysis of consciousness. Instead, they used the phenomenological method to analyze human existence in general. The method has also been successfully applied to specific fields, such as anthropology, law psychiatry, psychology, religion, and sociology.

James, William (1842-1910), became the most widely read American philosopher of the 1900's. With Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey, he led a philosophical movement called pragmatism .

Early career. James, the brother of the novelist Henry James, was born in New York City. As a medical student at Harvard University, he studied anatomy and physiology under the naturalist Louis Agassiz. Later, James's interests turned to psychology and the relationship among experience, thinking, and conduct. His The Principles of Psychology (1890) is considered a classic.

Neither physiology nor psychology could satisfy James's interest in the human condition. He was basically a philosopher who believed in the supreme importance of ideas. His own experiences had forced him to raise philosophical questions. James struggled to find his life's work. Depression over his inability to reach a decision led him to the verge of despair. He finally became convinced that people could devote their lives to finding new answers to such ancient questions as: Can human effort change the course of events? Does God exist? What difference would His existence make to people? What is the good life? How does a person's conviction about what is good affect his or her actions?

His beliefs. James tried to answer philosophical questions in pragmatic terms. He believed that every difference in thinking must make a difference to someone, somewhere. If two theories differ, the difference becomes clear when we know (1) how they differ over what the facts are, and (2) the difference in our behavior if we believe that one or the other is true.

One person may claim that people are free and can make real choices. Another may claim that people are not free because all human decisions and actions are determined by factors beyond their control. These claims cannot both be true. Therefore, according to James, we must find a way to decide between them because our conduct depends on which we adopt. James proposed that we approach such questions by tracing the consequences of each viewpoint. If we are free, we can make decisions. We are responsible for our actions. We can regret some of our actions and can say that the world would be better if such actions had not been carried out. If we are not free, we do not choose our actions. We are not responsible for our actions, and it makes no sense to speak about something happening differently from the way it did happen.

James did not claim to have solved difficult philosophical problems for all time. He tried to put them into a form that would make it easier for people to solve the problems for themselves. All people, James believed, must make up their own minds on issues of human life and destiny that cannot be settled on scientific grounds. James wrote a famous essay called "The Will to Believe" (1896). It states that if we believe in the possibility of some future event taking place, this belief increases our power to help make the event happen when the time comes for action. James's other works include Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907), and The Meaning of Truth (1909).

Dewey, John (1859-1952), was an American philosopher and educator. He helped lead a philosophical movement called pragmatism.

Dewey was strongly influenced by the then-new science of psychology and by the theory of evolution proposed by the English scientist Charles R. Darwin. Dewey came to regard intelligence as a power that people use when they face a conflict or challenge. He believed that people live by custom and habit. In most situations, it is sufficient to think and act as we have done in the past, but some physical and social situations present problems calling for new responses. According to Dewey, we cannot solve such problems by habitual action and thought. We must use intelligence as an instrument for overcoming any obstacles. Dewey's philosophy is thus called instrumentalism.

Dewey believed that knowledge is a means of controlling the environment, hopefully to improve the quality of human life. He wrote widely on art, democracy, education, philosophy, and science. In his writings, Dewey always focused on the same problem--how to close the gap between thought and action. Dewey's interpretation of science shows how thought and action are united. He considered science as a method for inquiring into the behavior of things. The results of such inquiry are the joint products of thought and activity. Dewey regarded activity as conducting experiments under controlled situations and thought as those theories that guide our experiments.

In every area of life, Dewey called for experimenting and trying out new methods. As an educator, he opposed the traditional method of learning by memory under the authority of teachers. He believed that education should not be concerned only with the mind. Students should develop manual skills. Learning must be related to the interests of students and connected with current problems. Dewey declared that education must include a student's physical and moral well-being as well as intellectual development.

In Art as Experience (1934), Dewey connected works of art with the experiences of everyday life. He wrote that daily experience can be glorious, joyous, sad, tedious, terrifying, and tragic. These, he said, are the qualities that architects, composers, painters, and writers seek to capture and express in their works. Dewey regarded education as incomplete if it ignores these experiences.

Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont. He had a distinguished teaching career at several universities, especially at Columbia University from 1904 until his retirement in 1930. Dewey's works include Democracy and Education (1916), Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), and Experience and Nature (1925).

Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970), was a British philosopher and mathematician. Russell ranks among the greatest philosophers of the 1900's. He has also been called the most important logician (expert in logic) since the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Russell made his most important contributions in formal logic and the theory of knowledge. However, his influence extends far beyond these fields. Russell developed a prose style of extraordinary clarity, wit, and passion. He received the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature.

Russell became an influential and controversial figure on social, political, and educational issues. He was an outspoken pacifist and advocated extremely liberal attitudes toward sex, marriage, and methods of education. Russell was a critic of World War I (1914-1918). He was imprisoned in 1918 for statements considered harmful to British-American relations, and again in 1961 for "incitement to civil disobedience" in a campaign for nuclear disarmament.

Russell made his major contributions to philosophy and mathematics in the early 1900's. He wanted to derive all of mathematics from logic, thus putting it on a sure foundation. Russell collaborated with the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on the monumental three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). This work attempts to show that all pure mathematics follows from premises that are strictly logical and uses only those concepts that can be defined in purely logical terms. Although Russell's ideas have been refined and corrected by later mathematicians, all modern work in logic and the foundations of mathematics begins with his ideas.

Russell made important contributions to the history of philosophy in such books as A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900) and A History of Western Philosophy (1945). He expressed his social and political ideas in a number of works, including German Social Democracy (1896), Roads to Freedom (1918), Power (1938), and Authority and the Individual (1949). Russell also influenced morality and education in essays and such books as Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Marriage and Morals (1929), and The Conquest of Happiness (1930). Russell wrote many accounts of his life, including a three-volume autobiography (1967 to 1969).

Russell was born near Trellek, Wales, north of Chepstow. His full name was Bertrand Arthur William Russell. He was a member of an old and noble family. In 1931, he inherited the family title and became Earl Russell.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, (1889-1951), was one of the most important philosophers of the 1900's. His ideas greatly influenced two philosophical movements, called logical positivism and linguistic analysis.

In his later work, Wittgenstein suggested that most philosophical problems result because philosophers think most words are names. For example, philosophers have asked, "What is time?" and they have been puzzled because they could not find any thing named time. Wittgenstein said this is the wrong way to find out what time is. What is necessary is to determine how the word time is used in ordinary language. In the sentence, "It is time to go home," we know what time means, and so its meaning is not a problem. In general, the meaning of a term is determined by public standards of judgment, so a necessarily "private language" is impossible. Wittgenstein claimed that this way of viewing language "dissolves" many traditional problems of philosophy. His approach to language has greatly influenced scholars in many fields.

Wittgenstein was born in Vienna, Austria. He studied at Cambridge University in England and later taught there. He gained recognition for his books Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and Philosophical Investigations (published in 1953, after his death).