Immanuel Kant | Gottlieb Doebler, ca. 1791

Key Terms for this Section
Moral Absolutism · Maxim/Axiom · Categorical Imperative
Moral Pluralism · Prima Facie Duties

7.1 | Universal Ethics • Spinoza

An Ethics for Everyone?

According to Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), ethics is dependent on the culture in which one lives. That is, the “social contract” that I live under in Texas is notably different from the rights and laws of North Korea. In North Korea, it is illegal to speak against the nation’s leader. But in Texas, political criticism is defended by the First Amendment. In this way, our Constitution is the supreme social contract Americans have with one another. But as we saw in Sec 5.1, imagining ethics being dictated by one’s culture leads to a number of problems. Not only does cultural relativism halt moral progress, but it denies the existence of human rights. So, as the early modern Wars of Religion came to an end and the modern world shrank in size, moral philosophers looked for ways to ground ethics in universal, absolute conditions outside of the Church (cf. Sec. 6.1).

The principle behind Universal Ethics is Moral Absolutism — the notion that there are objective moral rules applicable to all moral agents. Surely, we can understand the appeal of such an idea. If everyone followed the same ethical norms, we could eliminate unjust practices like favoritism, nepotism, and discrimination. Is such an idea possible? Well, despite our many cultural and geographical differences, we can see that most societies share fundamental values such as protecting children, promoting truth-telling, and prohibiting harm to individuals without just cause.

To make an absolutist moral claim, there must be an objective basis for determining right and wrong. The three most notable Ethical Frameworks that aim for this are Divine Command Theory (Sec. 5.4), Deontology (Sec. 7.3), and Utilitarianism (Sec. 8.3). In Divine Command Theory, whatever the gods command is good because the gods are objective and wise. Deontology, which we’ll be looking at closely in Sec. 7, argues that individuals ought to act based on their universalizable duty. And Utilitarianism, which we’ll be exploring in Sec. 8, argues that actions ought to be chosen based on the most optimific outcome (ie. what makes the most people happiest).

While each of these moral frameworks has its strengths and weaknesses, they all share in the fundamental idea that there is a universal moral good that all individuals should follow. The central claim of Universal Ethics is that by adhering to universal principles, we ensure that our actions are based on objectivity and reason, rather than subjective opinions or cultural biases. The aim of this view is to engender a more just and equitable world for everyone.

Developing Secular Ethics | Spinoza

From the Crusades to the birth of the United States, two Jewish philosophers stand apart — the medieval Maimonides, the Great Eagle of the Talmud, and the early modern Dutch master, Baruch Spinoza (d. 1677). In Sec. 3.1, we see how Maimonides (d. 1204) focuses on the use of reason to understand both God and the natural world, arguing that natural law and divine law are ultimately the same. After the Renaissance and the turn toward European Rationalism, Spinoza retains the high place of reason as the keystone of human understanding. However, Spinoza secularizes the concept — finding moral truths in nature itself rather than divine revelation. How?

Well, take for example St. Aquinas (d. 1274). The medieval monk claims that moral principles are an inherent part of the structure of reality, discoverable through reason (cf. Sec. 5.5). Fair enough — Spinoza thinks so, too. But where St. Aquinas says that these natural laws are ordained by a transcendent God, Spinoza doesn’t agree. Spinoza counters St. Aquinas by claiming that belief in a personal God is an anthropomorphic error. That is, we humans project our insecurities onto a divine Father and declare Him our Lawgiver. But Spinoza claims this unnecessarily limits God. For Spinoza, there is not a bearded, male, jealous Deity Who creates nature, prescribes our behavior, and judges morality like the saints describe. Rather, for Spinoza, God is transcendent and impersonal — manifesting Godself through the natural order and structure of reality. In other words, God and Nature are the same.

For Spinoza, God is the structure of the universe and the ultimate cause of everything that happens. Everything in nature follows the same necessary laws as an expression of God. So, to his thinking, praying for miracles makes no sense because this would be an aberration from God’s own natural law. Rather, our task as rational thinkers is to discover natural laws (cf. Sec. 3.5), including the ethical principles embedded therein.

We can see this same appeal to rationalism in Spinoza’s contemporary, René Descartes (d. 1650). Descartes argues that reason alone reveals universal truths about reality. Spinoza extends Descartes’ rationalism into moral philosophy — asserting that human beings can discover the inherent, universal moral laws of nature through reason.

The Modern Ethical Project

In Hobbes’ work, the Leviathan (1651), the English philosopher and contemporary of Spinoza seeks to ground moral and political obligations in the framework of the social contract, removing them from the realm of religious authority (cf. Sec. 6.1). To review, Hobbes finds human beings to be fundamentally selfish and driven by self-preservation, which leads them into conflict in the state of nature. To avoid this chaos and violence, we enter into a social contract (ie. a government), agreeing to obey a powerful king who ensures our peace and security (cf. Sec. 6.2). In Hobbes’ view, moral laws are not divine commands but agreements made to avoid the destructive consequences of unrestrained human behavior. Thus, ethics for Hobbes is rooted in political control and the enforcement of order rather than religious authority.

However, in Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), the Jewish philosopher veers away from Hobbes’ reliance on coercive political authority. In brief, Spinoza is a far more optimistic political thinker than Hobbes. For Hobbes, the purpose of government is to make sure we don’t kill each other. Spinoza is also concerned about the religious wars and religious persecution of 17th-century Europe — especially as a religious minority in the Spanish-owned, Protestant Netherlands. However, Spinoza claims that governments exist primarily to promote the necessary conditions for developing our reason to our fullest potential. In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Spinoza posits that rational citizens who understand their own nature and interests would logically support the collective good. No Hobbesian coercion necessary.

And so, after the passing of Europe’s Jewish and Anglican moral juggernauts — Spinoza (d. 1677) and Hobbes (d. 1679) — Europe was left with a secular ethical project.

7.2 | Ethics after Hobbes

Criticizing Hobbes

The Social Contract Theory found in Hobbes’ 1651 Leviathan is a selfish, goal-oriented ethics. If you want to remain in our city, then you must follow our rules. Hobbes imagines this to be the basis of morality. Kant strongly disagrees.

When criticizing Hobbes, we could have a go at the implicitness of the consent Hobbes is promoting (ie. do natural-born citizens actually sign a contract stating they’ll abide by the Constitution?). Locke argues this when he explicitly states that lawful governance only arises from the consent of the governed. Or, we could argue that Hobbes doesn’t explain how we should address disagreements in our society — particularly between minorities and the ruling majority. That is, if a minority group disagrees with the majority’s decisions, should they simply accept the majority’s will, or should they be allowed to form their own contract? Or, we could dive into the quagmire that is Hobbesian mutual benefit. To wit, Hobbes states that citizens obey laws in exchange for the government’s protection. But this quid pro quo formula clearly marginalizes vulnerable populations that cannot reciprocate — such as infants, animals, recent immigrants, or future generations. Hobbes gives us no reason to be good to those who can’t benefit us — which would render ethics into nothing more than a transaction.

Yet Kant starts somewhere even more fundamental. For the Prussian philosopher, Hobbes’ entire ethical project of goal-oriented ethics is wrong from the start. Kant dismissively refers to goal-oriented ethics as following hypothetical imperatives. The “hypothetical” in this phrasing refers to “if/then” thinking. In other words, in a hypothetical imperative, a person is motivated by a reward. But this isn’t ethics, Kant says.

“If you want good grades, then you should study. If you want to lose weight, then you should diet. If you want to maintain a good reputation, then you should act well.” These are all examples of hypothetical imperatives. And Kant hates them all. After all, if a person is only behaving because they don’t want to get in trouble, we can hardly call such a person ‘good.’ The ‘good’ person isn’t the person who slows down at the sight of a patrol car or the person who puts their phone away when the usher goes by in a theater. That’s just the self-serving behavior of someone who doesn’t want to get caught. Instead, Kant wants us to think about how our duties should shape our behavior before we ever consider how the outcome affects us.

A Duty-Based Ethics

Deontology is a form of Universal Ethics that focuses on the study of moral duties rather than moral virtue or consequence. The word deontology comes from the Greek words “deon” (Gr. duty) and “logos” (Gr. reason). You’ll recall from our study of Aristotle (Sec 5.2), that teleology is the philosophical study of goals or ends. Well, some, like John Stuart Mill (Sec 8.3) will take a teleological view of ethics — focusing on the ends or consequences of moral actions. But deontology is different than these two. In a deontological view of ethics, one focuses on the moral principles that underlie the fulfillment of one’s duties. That is, in contrast to character (cf. Aristotle) or outcome (cf. Mill), the deontologist concentrates on the reasoning that grounds our duties.

The Centrality of Duty | Kant

Let’s return now to Hobbes’ goal-oriented duties (ie. hypothetical imperatives).

If you’re just being good to get a treat, then you’re not really a moral person after all (cf. Hobbesian selfishness). Behaving well for a tasty treat is how we train animals and toddlers. Goal-oriented, hypothetical imperatives like this are conditional. If you want this, then do that… But that’s not how ethics works, according to Kant. We should do right solely because it’s the right thing to do. The same goes for punishment. If we only behave out of fear of punishment, then we’re not good at all — in such a moment, we’re only working with duty, not from duty. See? If your neighbor refrains from throwing eggs at your car out of fear of the police, does that make her a good person? Of course not. Or if your partner helps you bring groceries into the kitchen so you’ll later watch the show they like, was their assistance a morally praiseworthy act? Not at all.

Here, we see that our motives (ie. reasons for acting) are essential to living ethically. What Kant wants from us is to do the right thing out of a sense of duty. In this way, we are good when we act out of a sense of moral duty, not out of personal gain or self-interest, as Hobbes would have us do. When you think about it, there are many actions that could be considered good but be performed for the wrong reasons — like picking up trash, joining a volunteer organization, or taking your grandmother grocery shopping. If you do them because it’s the right thing to do, then Kant thinks that’s great! But if you’re picking up trash because you owe the city community service hours, or you’re volunteering to earn a scholarship, or helping grandma so she’ll keep you in her will — well, you’re not doing anything good, really. The only way to truly be a moral person, according to Kant, is to act from a sense of duty.

Now, you may ask, “Is it still acting with duty if I enjoy doing it? What if I like to shop for groceries for my partner? What if I like taking my family to church? What if I like volunteering at the animal shelter?” Yes, this is ok for Kant. But we must be clear — the underlying motivation for performing an action must begin from a sense of moral obligation to have moral worth. In other words, the fact you enjoy it or possibly get something out of it must be incidental.

In other words, you’d be doing it whether you enjoy it or not, as it’s the right thing to do.

7.3 | Maxims & Reason - Kant

Good Maxims | Kant

For Kant, the worth of a moral action cannot be derived from its purpose or outcome but only from the moral axiom that it follows. This means that even if an action’s outcome or purpose seems positive (eg. it saves a life), it does not have moral worth unless it was done out of a sense of duty. By prioritizing the duty to do the right thing, Kant places emphasis on the importance of personal responsibility and ethical behavior regardless of external factors.

So what is a moral axiom? Here, Kant is using the German word maxim (Lt. axiom). A maxim is a principle of action for a moral problem. This principle determines the action’s moral worth. That is, if an action arises from a good maxim, then the action is praiseworthy. If an action arises from a bad maxim, it is not praiseworthy.

For example, let’s say that we live by the maxim that “lying is wrong.” So when someone asks our opinion about their new haircut, we’re honest about it. In general, Kant would say such honesty is morally praiseworthy when it arises from a sense of duty to the truth (ie. our action arises from a good maxim, namely that “lying is wrong”). But if you tell your boss that you like his haircut to curry favor with him, then this would be wrong. Why? Because your action arose from a bad maxim (ie. “I should manipulate my boss, so he looks on me favorably”). In another situation, let’s say a friend is going through some difficult stuff and gets a bad haircut. He then asks your opinion. The maxim, “lying is wrong,” may do more harm than good here. So, we might amend our maxim to, “lying is wrong, except when it’s a little white lie to boost a sad friend’s feelings.” Such additional details can aid in building better maxims (ie. the principles by which we act). Just keep in mind — the moral worth of an action (eg. praising someone’s haircut) is determined by whether the action arose from a sense of duty and whether its maxim is sound.

Bad Maxims | Kant

But suppose your friend works in the back kitchen of a busy restaurant. One night, a kitchen fire breaks out, and he goes running for the exit. On his way out, he attempts to push another guy out of his way but accidentally pushes the guy out the door to safety. Was this a morally praiseworthy action for Kant? In a word: No. The consequence or outcome of your friend’s reckless behavior was that the other guy’s life was saved. Sure. But, saving the guy’s life was not on your friend’s mind when he went running for the exit. In short, your friend didn’t push the guy out the door from a sense of duty. He saved a life totally by accident! Here, your friend was operating from a maxim that says, “If there’s a kitchen fire, push people down if you have to in order to reach safety.” This is clearly not a moral maxim. So, a deontologist would call your friend’s pushing immoral because it arose from a bad maxim, even though it also incidentally saved a life. Note here that a consequentialist (cf. Sec 8) will think the action praiseworthy because the outcome (which is their focus) was saving a life.

Commanded by Reason | Kant

In ancient times, we were commanded by the gods (ie. Divine Command Theory). But since the time of Hobbes and Spinoza, we’ve walked away from God-talk in normative ethics (cf. European Wars of Religion). Still, Kant thinks there’s something to those ancient commands or ‘imperatives.’ He thinks ethics works best when focused on commands, but neither divine commands nor goal-oriented, hypothetical imperatives are sufficient (cf. Sec 7.2). Kant thinks there’s a more reasonable, modern answer.

Unlike Hobbes, Kant insists that ethics is never conditional on your selfish, subjective goals. Instead, Kant maintains that ethics is an absolute, immutable part of our reality. For deontologists like Immanuel Kant or W.D. Ross (cf. Sec 7.5), ethics is not something we agree upon but is instead a deep-set part of reality that is as undeniable as the speed of light or the theory of gravity. We don’t agree on ethics. We discover ethics. For Kant, ethical principles have the structure of immutable universal laws. Chief among these laws is the ultimate, absolute law from which all other laws arise: the Categorical Imperative.

If our ethical imperatives are based on universal principles, consistent and applicable to everyone, then there can be no stench of self-interest or favoritism in our maxims. In fact, the only maxims (ie. principles of moral actions) we ought to follow are those we can also impose equally on everyone else. This is what Kant refers to as the Categorical Imperative. In Kant’s words, “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” Kant’s Categorical Imperative has four formulations. In the following lesson (ie. Sec 7.4), we will discuss two of these formulations.

7.4 | Deontological Principles • Kant

The Categorical Imperative: Kant's Principle of Universality

At the very core of Deontology is the claim that everyone must be treated equally in ethics. There cannot be exceptions in Universal Ethics (otherwise, they wouldn’t be universal!). Taking into consideration all we’ve discussed, we may then understand Kant as claiming: I know right from wrong because of the duties that reason can determine should be universally applied [equally and to everyone].

The Categorical Imperative is the ultimate law of ethics for Immanuel Kant. One of its four formulations (ie. the Principle of Universality) involves testing the morality of an action to see if it can be made into a universal law. This involves three steps.

2. ) Determine the maxim of the action. For example, imagine someone is running late to pick up their friend and decides to speed down the highway. Their maxim would be, “It’s ok to speed if you’re late picking up a friend.”

3. ) Imagine everyone adopts this maxim. In a world where speeding is ok if you’re late picking up a friend, our roads would become irrevocably dangerous. This is far worse than what we have now.

4. ) Ask if it’s reasonable to will this maxim on the world. Would it be reasonable to will onto the world the maxim “it’s ok to speed if you’re late picking up a friend,” given that this would make our roads far more dangerous than they are now? No! Well, then, you have your answer. Logic commands you not to speed to pick up your friend because you cannot reasonably will everyone else to behave that way.

The rational person is commanded by reason to accept only the ethical principles that can be universalized. Through the Categorical Imperative, Kant provides a framework for testing the morality of our actions. Because, unlike Hobbes’ contention that ethics is conditional on our own self-interest, Kant says that ethics is absolute and universal — in part because we’re all of equal moral worth. So why can’t we speed down the road to pick up our friend? Because it would be illogical.

Why illogical? If we submit that ethics is universal, then that means everyone must be treated the same way (ie. the Principle of Universality). If everyone must be treated the same, then logically, I cannot make an exception for myself. So if everyone can’t speed down the road, then I shouldn’t either. In this way, reason commands us to share the road safely, as it would therefore be illogical for any one person to speed. If we treat anyone as being above the moral law (including ourselves), then we have acted inconsistently (and therefore illogically!) with the universal nature of ethics.

The Categorical Imperative: Kant's Principle of Humanity

A fundamental modern notion of Kant’s is that we are “autonomous” (cf. Locke) — from the Greek for self (auto) governing (nomos). This notion arises from the Lockean claim that we can act from our own reason, rather than being forced to behave by some overbearing external force — like a king or a priest (cf. Hobbes). Whereas the lords and land barons of the medieval world thought little of our value beyond its instrumentality for making them money, Kant argued human beings have inherent worth. Where we common people were once treated as merely a way to make the aristocracy money (ie. a means to an end), in the modern age Kant says we must demand to be treated better! Because when we are treated only as a means to an end, our intrinsic value as human beings has been violated.

In a word, a human being does not have a price. A fellow human being has dignity.

Kant argued that all rational beings should be treated as ends unto themselves. This is because our value as humans is intrinsic and not instrumental. You’ll recall from our discussion on Aristotle that intrinsic means “for its own sake.” Something has intrinsic value when it is valued for its own sake. Something has instrumental value when it is wanted for some other purpose. For example, a diamond only has instrumental value because it can be traded for other things of value. A diamond doesn’t have intrinsic value because it has no inherent worth (ie. it’s just a lump of common carbon). But humanity functions in an entirely opposite way. A person has intrinsic value because human life is cherished for its own sake.

Because of our intrinsic value as humans, Kant argues it would be illogical (and therefore immoral, as this is a question of ethics) to treat humans merely as objects of instrumental value. Accordingly, a good Kantian must recognize and respect the inherent dignity of all humans and resist the temptation to use people as mere tools to achieve personal goals or desires. In this way, we may understand the Kantian Principle of Humanity as saying: I know right from wrong because of the duties that reason can determine should be universally applied [wherein people are treated as ends unto themselves].

Essentially, this formulation of the Categorical Imperative (ie. the Universal Moral Law) recognizes and lifts up the autonomy and agency of the individual, emphasizing that she is to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect. Remember, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are when we started arguing for our Natural Rights (cf. Hobbes). Questions like “how much is a human life worth?” are obscene to thinkers like Hobbes and Kant. Why? Because human life cannot be quantified in such a way — we have intrinsic value! (Note: J.S. Mill and the Consequentialists will feel very differently about this.) Ethically, we cannot be traded or sold. Constitutive to our identity as humans, we logically should treat one another humanely. This means never letting ourselves forget the inborn, intrinsic value of our fellow persons.

Is it ever OK to Treat People as a Means to an End?

Actually, yes. And I hope you do! We treat waitstaff at a restaurant as a means to receive our food. We treat employees as a means to build wealth. And we treat professors as a means to earn a college degree. It would be weird if we acted like it was beneath the dignity of our waiter to bring us dinner, or our employees to show up to work. Don’t make it weird. What’s at stake here is the word “mere” in Kant’s formulation. He says, “Act in such a way as to treat humanity as an end unto themselves rather than a mere means to an end.” See, Kant isn’t saying it’s outright wrong for us to treat employees as a means to build wealth. That’s fine if that’s what they chose. What would be immoral, however, is if we only treated employees as a mere means of building wealth. We must first and foremost treat people as having intrinsic value — as an “end unto themselves.” So, yes, your waitress does indeed have instrumental value insofar as she takes your order and delivers your food. However, let’s never lose sight of the fact that before she’s your waitress, she is also an emotional, inspired, beautiful human being — whose radiance and intrinsic value lie far, far beyond the banality of your dinner plate. Please treat her accordingly.

7.5 | Prima Facie Duties • Ross

Kant's Major Problem: What about Conflicting Moral Duties?

Deontology is a modern voice of reason in a sea of callbacks to monarchy and tradition. Yet there is a systemic problem with the kind of deontology Kant espouses. What’s the problem? So Kant wants us to follow our universalizable maxims (ie. our duties). Sure. But what happens when we have overlapping or conflicting duties? For example…

1.) Should I lie about a runaway slave to save a life, or report them honestly to the authorities?

• These are two conflicting duties: save a life vs. my duty to the truth

2.) Should a doctor respect his patient’s confidentiality, or warn others he’s a danger?

• These are two conflicting duties: the doctor keeping her word vs. saving others

3.) Should a friend keep a promise, or break it by sharing their friend’s infidelity?

• These are two conflicting duties: maintaining a friend’s trust vs. ending an affair

4.) Should an officer follow orders, or cease to violate someone’s civil rights?

• These are two conflicting duties: obeying his orders vs. obeying his conscience

The central problem of Kant’s Deontology is its reliance on Moral Monism: the position that there is a single, overriding rule about morality. In Kant’s case, this single rule is the Categorical Imperative. The same problem exists for Utilitarianism as well. Neither deontological ethics (Kant, Sec. 7) nor teleological ethics (Mill, Sec. 8) provide any guidance for how to deal with moral contradictions. While there is much to respect about Kant’s efforts, this remains his fundamental flaw.

Take, for example, the concept of lying. Once logic dictates our duties, we must follow them universally and unconditionally, right? Well, truth-telling intuitively seems like a fairly important duty. As lying violates our logical, moral duty to tell the truth (logically, lying undermines relationships, contracts, legal testimony, etc.). But aren’t there situations when we have a higher duty to lie? What about lying to prevent harm or to save a life? If we had a neighbor, whose barn was part of the hallowed Underground Railroad, would we not lie to the authorities to save the lives of runaway slaves? Yet Kant’s Moral Monism can provide no moral justification for such situations and will insist flatly that lying is never permitted.

Moral Pluralism

If you’re thinking now that Kantian Deontology is insufficient for the complexity of our moral landscape — you’re not alone. Kant’s strict prohibition against lying has certainly caused many to question the validity of his moral framework. At the very least, we can say that Deontology needs some nuance added to its moral decision-making apparatus. Enter: Moral Pluralism.

When our moral duties conflict (eg. lying to save a life), Moral Monism gives no clear guidance for how we ought to prioritize one duty over another. For this reason, many turn to Moral Pluralism. Moral Pluralism is the view that there are multiple moral goods, so a plurality of moral values should be simultaneously considered when making moral decisions. Because of the sheer complexity of the moral landscape, no single ethical solution exists that can satisfy every ethical problem or moral obligation. With Moral Pluralism, we find a more flexible, context-specific approach to ethics.

Prima Facie Duties | Ross

Nearly two hundred years after Kant, the British World War I veteran and philosopher W.D. Ross (d. 1971) came to reassess and reinvent Kantian Deontology with a form of Deontology all his own. In his 1930 work, The Right and the Good, Ross rejects Kant’s adherence to the single, overriding moral principle of the Categorical Imperative. Instead, the war veteran Ross finds that our duties must be considered in light of multiple, often contradictory principles. Right and wrong are not as clear-cut as Kant naively believed. Europe’s First World War proved this to Professor Ross (cf. Sec. 6.4). So, instead of the inflexible monism required of Kantian Deontology, Ross proposed we instead take a pluralist view of the obvious duties for which all critically thinking people are responsible. He called these Prima Facie Duties. To wit, in Ross’ framework for Prima Facie Duties, the moral agent considers a list of “obvious” duties (ie. prima facie) and compares them against each other to determine which moral possibility fulfills a plurality of duties.

The first of Ross’ duties is Fidelity, which refers to our duty to keep promises, contracts, and agreements. For instance, when we return a borrowed item to its owner, fulfill a contract or a promise we made, or keep a secret we are acting with fidelity. The duty of Fidelity allows individuals to hold themselves and others accountable for their actions, ensuring that promises and agreements are kept and honored. Another Prima Facie Duty is Reparations, which is our duty to compensate others for harm done to them. People should be held accountable for their harmful behavior, right? Repairing or replacing damaged property, apologizing for offensive or hurtful behavior, and accepting punishment for wrongdoing are examples of Reparations. By fulfilling this duty, individuals can make amends for the harm they have caused and help restore justice to our community. Ross also included Gratitude as one of the Prima Facie Duties, which refers to our duty to express thanks for the kindness of others. Helping someone who has helped you, supporting a cause or group who has helped you, and simply saying “thank you” are examples of Gratitude. By acknowledging the kindness of others, we build stronger relationships, promote a positive community, and foster an environment of mutual respect and understanding.

Justice was also on Ross’ list of Prima Facie Duties. Justice involves our collective duty to distribute benefits and burdens fairly and equitably in our society. This includes maintaining fair courts of justice where the law is adjudicated impartially, giving equitable opportunities to individuals regardless of their gender, race, or other factors, and limiting the scope of retributive justice to “an eye for an eye.” Another important Prima Facie Duty is Beneficence, which is our duty to promote the well-being of others. This includes helping someone in need, providing education, healthcare, and opportunities to our community, and volunteering our time and resources to charitable causes. Ross claims that we have a duty to help others, especially those who are less fortunate, and to contribute to the betterment of society as a whole. Ross also felt that Self-Improvement was a Prima Facie Duty. This duty insists that we aspire to be our best selves and work to be our highest selves. This includes taking classes to become better thinkers and citizens (yay!), practicing our craft so that it benefits those around us, and never, ever settling or giving up on yourself. Self-improvement is important because it helps us to become better people and to contribute more effectively to society. If I’m not my best, how can I raise someone else up to find their best? Finally, Ross posited a shared and obvious duty not to harm others or Non-Maleficence. The war veteran Ross insisted we must avoid causing undue harm to others by refraining from undue physical violence and avoiding emotional distress through deceit or fraud. Additionally, we must not cause harm to the environment.

Example: Keep a Friend’s Promise or Warn Others of Harm?

Now that we’ve explored the seven Prima Facie Duties that Ross says we must consider, let’s apply them to a dilemma. Suppose a friend has asked you to keep a terrible promise. He has told you he’s going to hurt a group of people in a spate of revenge. Let’s examine how each of our Prima Facie Duties might come into play here.

1. Fidelity. This duty tells us that we have a duty to keep our friend’s promise.

2. Reparations. This duty tells us that we should aid others when they’ve been harmed. If keeping the promise would lead to harm, then we should prioritize the duty of reparations and warn others.

3. Gratitude doesn’t have any obvious bearing here.

4. Justice tells us that we should aim for a fair and equitable distribution of benefits. If breaking the promise would lead to a more just distribution of benefits, then we should prioritize justice over fidelity.

5. Beneficence is our duty to promote the well-being of others. If breaking the promise would prevent harm, then we should prioritize beneficence over fidelity.

6. Self-improvement doesn’t apply in this situation.

7. Non-Maleficence tells us that we should avoid causing our friendship harm. Or is it the harm of the group we should consider?

So, if we tally these up, we see there are — at best — only two votes for keeping the promise. Non-maleficence could go either way. But there are three very strong arguments for warning others that your friend has threatened their safety (cf. our duty to reparations, justice, and beneficence). So, according to Ross, our overall duty is clear: warn those folks that your friend intends to hurt them.

7.6 | Respect & Consent

The Categorical Imperative: Kant's Principle of Autonomy

For many, Ross breathes new life into Deontology. Herein, morality is still centered on duties. However, we can better navigate the complexity of the moral landscape with someone like Ross, who appreciates the trouble with conflicting moral duties. Gratefully, Ross has shown us a way forward with Deontology. From here, we will continue to explore modern, applied ethics from a Deontological point of view. But to do so, we must have one last conversation with Kant.

As discussed in the previous section (Sec 8), Kantian Deontology’s central claim is that everyone must be treated equally. So when we arrive at Kant’s third formulation of the Categorical Imperative, it comes as no surprise that he is raising questions about the autonomous nature of his fellow moral agents. In essence, his third formulation claims: I know right from wrong because of the duties that reason can determine should be universally applied [as if by a legislator of universal laws].

In summary, Kant sees the Categorical Imperative through four formulations.

• The Principle of Universality: wherein our maxims must be universalizable (cf. Spinoza)

• The Principle of Humanity: wherein we cannot treat people merely as a means to an end (vs. Hobbes’ Social Contract)

• The Principle of Living as if in a Kingdom of Ends, which we didn’t go over, but essentially says we can’t privilege one person or group over another (cf. Rousseau)

• And the Principle of Autonomy, which we will endeavor to unpack below... (cf. Locke)

Autonomy, derived from the Greek “auto” (self) and “nomos” (govern), refers to self-governance and the ability to make independent choices. It is fundamental to moral philosophy, emphasizing personal freedom, agency, and responsibility (cf. Locke). Autonomy, as defined by Kant, is the capacity to act according to reason and moral law, not merely following external rules. Kant claims we can recognize moral truths through rationality (cf. Spinoza), so as to act authentically when following universal laws (cf. the Categorical Imperative).

Kant’s Principle of Autonomy suggests we should follow moral laws as if we created them (ie. any rational person would do the same). Today, we understand autonomy to include three preconditions: independence (freedom from external coercion), competence (ability to reason and understand moral choices), and authenticity (acting in accordance with one’s true values). These elements are necessary for someone to be considered a morally responsible agent.

Lastly, moral responsibility is diminished when autonomy is compromised. For instance, a person acting under duress, such as a bank teller threatened by a robber, lacks independence and is not fully accountable. A child lacks competence and is not morally responsible for actions they do not understand. Authenticity is compromised when someone acts against their values, such as an addict stealing to feed their addiction. Autonomy defines the degree of moral responsibility — with praise or blame attributed based on the agent’s level of autonomous decision-making.

The Moral Concept of Respect

The concept of respect is another key element in the moral evaluation of actions. A fundamental question often asked in moral dilemmas is whether the agent violated the autonomy of another. According to Kant’s Principle of Humanity, all autonomous beings are owed moral deference and respect. The level of respect we give others is informed by their level of autonomy. Animals are generally given the lowest priority since they are not moral agents, and non-autonomous individuals like children or people suffering from dementia are afforded a kind of respect, but this respect is necessarily paternalistic. The highest, co-equal level of respect is owed to your fellow moral agents, who are capable of reason (like you) and must be respected for their autonomy, which they must also respect in you.

In moral dilemmas, the level of respect owed is determined in part by the level of autonomy of the entity or person involved. Consider the following scenarios and try to imagine the kind of respect (nonexistent, paternalistic, co-equal, etc.) owed to each situation.

• Empty beer cans are left along a path in the woods. We owe a kind of paternalistic respect to nature by not littering, as nature is not an autonomous agent.

• Your child refuses to brush her teeth and throws her wet toothbrush on the carpet. Lacking full autonomy, the child requires paternalistic respect to teach them good behavior.

• A comatose loved one who lacks autonomy must have an important medical decision made for them. If she made the decision while autonomous (before she was in the hospital), we should respect her autonomous wishes. However, if she left the choice to others, we must respectfully make the choice that we feel is in her best interest.

• A drunk friend at a party is demanding you give him back his keys. Obviously, he is compromised in his current state and lacks the autonomy (temporarily) to drive without endangering others.

• A romantic partner is caught in a lie while trying to spare your feelings. Herein, the two of you are co-equal moral agents. Both of you must traverse the situation respecting each other’s ability and right to choose for yourselves what you want and need.

The Moral Concept of Consent

Consent is a crucial concept in moral philosophy. Consent is the voluntary agreement or permission given by one moral agent to another to engage in an activity that falls under their purview. Consent is at the very heart of autonomy and can only be given if certain preconditions are met — such as both parties being moral agents (able to think and act morally), independent (making their own choice, free from control), competent (of the relevant facts, consequences, and values), authentic (ie. reflective of and endorsing the action to take place), and duly respected (ie. not coerced or violated). Consent is required in many ethical situations, including sexual relations, medical procedures, social research, sharing personal information, using someone’s image or voice, sharing privileged information, and ALL physical contact. Violating someone’s autonomy by not obtaining their consent is not merely immoral — it goes against the very fundamental principles of ethics.

It is crucial to ensure that both parties involved are fully aware of the situation and have given their explicit consent before proceeding with any activity befitting the need for consent. Consent cannot be coerced, and it is the responsibility of the person seeking consent to ensure that all preconditions are met. Obtaining consent is not only a moral imperative but also a legal requirement in many situations.

If you learn nothing else from this section, learn this — No one should ever coerce you or make you do something you don’t feel comfortable doing.

Last Section: Contractarian Ethics
This Section: Deontological Ethics
Next Section: Consequentialist Ethics

Thomas Hobbes | John Michael Wright, ca. 1669–1670

Key Terms for this Section
State of Nature · Social Contract · Negative Liberty
Positive Liberty · Democracy

6.1 | Our Natural Rights

The European Wars of Religion (1522-1648)

By the end of the Middle Ages, public discontent with the Medieval Church had spiraled faster and further than ever before, as nearly half of Europe perished. The Great Famine and the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) had taken a heavy political toll. The Church’s responses to public discontent ranged from inquisitions (blaming the religious purity of Christians), antisemitism (blaming the Jews), and religious wars (blaming those who defy the Medieval Catholic Church). These responses led to mass disillusionment over the Church’s historic hegemony over Europe. Schisms began to spread, wherein multiple men claimed to be pope. And by the mid-1500s, Protestants like Martin Luther and John Calvin had set Europe on a course to total religio-political reformation.

The Protestant Reformation, which began in 1520, forever complicated religious discourse in Western ethics because, from that moment forward, there would no longer be one universal (Gr. catholicos) religious voice in Europe. As a result, the primary challenge of modern ethics would be to talk about right and wrong without recourse to religious texts, as no one in Europe after 1520 could agree on how to interpret those texts. Appeals to Christian philosophers would now be met with suspicion as Catholics and Protestants eyed each other from across the table and prepared for war.

German knights loyal to Luther opposed the Catholic Church in open combat as early as 1522 (cf. the Knight’s Revolt). By 1531, religious conflict had spread to Switzerland (cf. the Kappel Wars). As Calvin’s ideas spread to France, wars of religion spread throughout the countryside. The most notorious episode occurred on 24 August 1572, when thousands of Protestants were killed at the behest of the ruling French Catholic families (cf. St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre). Bloodier still was the war between the mighty Spanish Catholic Empire and their Dutch Protestant provinces (cf. Eighty Years’ War, beginning in 1568). Yet the worst of these wars was the Thirty Years’ War, which began in Lutheran Germany and spilled out to modern-day Czechia, Denmark, Sweden, and France. Approximate figures for casualties are as follows:

• Spain (3% of pop.): ¼ million dead
• Denmark, Poland, Sweden, & Switzerland: ½ million dead
• The Dutch (20% of pop.): 1 million dead
• France (15% of pop.): 4 million dead
• Germany (30% of pop.): 8 million dead

By 1642, about 10% of Europe’s population was dead from fighting between different visions of Christianity. The Thirty Years’ War (Germany) and the Eighty Years’ War (the Dutch) were still ongoing. That year, the English Civil War began between those who supported the king’s ‘middle-way’ compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism (Anglicans) and those who thought Anglicanism wasn’t Protestant (or ‘pure’) enough (Puritans). From 1642-1651, 200,000 Englishmen died in the name of religion (about 5% of the population). However, in the last year of fighting, Thomas Hobbes publishes a text that will profoundly transform the English and later American view of politics — the Leviathan (1651).

Rule by Consent

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679) was a conservative Englishman raised in the Anglican tradition. Seeing that the European Wars of Religion would soon be at his doorstep, the 52-year-old scholar moved to Paris in 1640. From there, his daily horror was reading news from home — where thousands upon thousands of young, proud Englishmen were killing each other over religion — as had happened for a century on the European continent. In his exile, Hobbes wrote one of the most important texts of the 17th century.

Hobbes’ Leviathan (published in 1651, just ten years after Descartes’ groundbreaking 1641 Meditations) addresses fundamental questions of political philosophy. His central concern revolves around the extent to which subjects should obey their king (particularly those kings who govern poorly) and under what conditions it would be justifiable to revolt. Before completing his book, the Anglican King Charles I is beheaded (1649) by his Puritanical opposition. This strongly influences Hobbes’ sociopolitical views. Hobbes doubles down on his defense of the monarchy as a safeguard against anarchy. But Hobbesian monarchism is borne of practicality, not religious belief. He rejects the old Divine Right of Kings — which states European monarchs rule with God-given authority and are therefore beyond reproach. Instead, Hobbes proposes that political authority ought to arise from the consent of the governed, whose government exists for the mutual protection of the governed.

Let’s take a moment to contrast this thinking with St. Aquinas (d. 1274). The premodern Scholastics claimed that moral order is inborn in all moral agents in a system of Natural Law. That is, moral principles are derived from nature and reason. Herein, St. Aquinas posits that humans understand moral truths through rational reflection of the creation — as God’s moral intentions are embedded in nature. Our contract is our covenant with God. But, in the aftermath of the historic Wars of Religion, Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679) takes a very different approach to political philosophy. He doesn’t start from divine providence and creation like St. Aquinas. Instead, Hobbes says that our moral principles are derived from our fundamental natural rights as free subjects. In modern politics, our moral contract is with one another — regardless of our personal religious beliefs.

If Hobbes’ talk of fundamental natural rights sounds familiar, it might be because it was quoted a century later in our Declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,* that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

*Unalienable is an archaic word, meaning ‘cannot be taken away’

Natural Rights We All Possess

It’s no secret that, when writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (d. 1826) borrowed heavily from English philosophers John Locke (cf. Sec. 6.3) and Thomas Hobbes. In fact, many of our most cherished political ideals come from early Modern English philosophy. In Hobbes’ Leviathan, we find familiar claims to Natural Rights that, a century later, will be repeated across the pond in America’s founding documents. Among Hobbes’ many beliefs concerning Natural Rights are his claims that all men (back then, society privileged men in all things) share a natural right to seek peace and to defend that peace with arms. Hobbes also claimed we have as much freedom as we can offer another person, that everyone has shares in those rights equally, and that everyone should be judged equally under the law. Hobbes believed we all had a right to seek and abide by agreements and contracts. We also have the natural right (going all the way back to St. Aquinas) to live peacefully in a shared society. In our social conduct, we ought to favor mercy over revenge, and not live in hate over others not like us — if we’re to be good students of the English Civil War. Lastly, we should acknowledge that all men are created equal (yes, England said it before we did). And, as equal men, we ought to share in common what cannot be divided among us equally (eg. a lake, the sky, or a public park). These are the natural rights assumed by all English citizens living in the American colonies in the century after Hobbes.

6.2 | Social Contract Theory • Hobbes

Why do We the People need Government?

So Hobbes points out that we all have the same basic human needs and the same ability to harm each other when those needs aren’t met. Why do we harm each other in this way? Hobbes says it’s because humans are naturally selfish (ie. psychological egoism). Some may say we help the needy out of love, but Hobbes says we do so because we fear the same could happen to us. So, what is a group of self-serving, equally harmful, equally needy humans to do with each other? Simple: we form a government. Because without a government, we’d kill each other to gain the resources we need. In a Representative Democracy such as ours, we elect folks to meet with other representatives from other areas of our body politic (Smith County, Texas, or the U.S. in general) to vote on policy and laws. These policies and laws have one primary Hobbesian goal — to ensure we have what we need: security, freedom, and peace.

The State of Nature | Hobbes

Imagine the condition you’d be living in without a government. There would be no laws or law enforcement, so every criminal urge now goes unabated. There are no judges or courts to adjudicate justice or prevent fraud. Without regulatory laws, there’d be no city power, accredited schools, or bank withdrawals. Public electricity and credit no longer exist. Even the cash in your pocket has no agreed-upon value. Without electricity or law enforcement, there are no more grocery stores or department stores. Without regulatory agencies, there are no experts to consider what is edible, medicinal, or dangerous. So, pick your analogy. It’s the Purge. The Last of Us. The Apocalypse. Whatever you call it, a society without a government collapses instantly. Your smartphone has no Internet connection, and your wall socket has no power. There’s no fuel to get you anywhere else, and any sense of trust on public roads is gone. And getting law and order back, even after a very brief absence, might take decades or longer — because who chooses the rightful successor to the government that failed?

Hobbes calls this nightmarish way of life the “State of Nature.” Unlike St. Aquinas, Hobbes looks to the wilderness outside the city gates and sees a battlefield wherein everyone fights everyone else for scraps. Hobbes famously describes this lifestyle as, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Whatever your views of current American politics, I can assure you that our troubles today are a mere shadow of the social abyss we would endure without a functioning government. In this, we find the Hobbesian paradox — without laws, we have no freedom.

So, we find in Hobbes the desire to build modern cities and laws as a retreat from the state of nature. Sure, we may be naturally quite selfish and violent. But Hobbes promises that if everyone trades up some of their freedoms (like the freedom to kill someone in revenge) to the state, then we all collectively end up safer and happier. For Hobbes, cooperation is the key to a moral and healthy society.

Social Contract Theory | Framework: Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes grounds ethics in practical necessity. You’re not good because of some command from above (cf. Natural Law Theory). Hobbes says you’re good because otherwise, the city would cast you out into the wilderness (ie. the state of nature). This is called Social Contract Theory — that is, morality arises from the rational agreements we make to cooperate out of our practical need to survive. In this way, Hobbes centers moral philosophy on the concept of mutual benefit. Herein, we follow laws and moral rules because they enable us to live together in a stable society. For example, we obey traffic laws not because of holy writ but because society enforces them. If we break these rules — steal, lie, or cheat — society punishes us, excluding us from the benefits of social cooperation.

Why make this move? Why make an appeal to mutual benefit instead of theology? Again, Hobbes is living at the end of the European Wars of Religion and the end of the religiously motivated English Civil War. From 1520 onward, it will not be the case again in Europe that [nearly] everyone follows the same Church in the same way. After the Protestant Reformation, the idea of a God-given moral code that could be applied universally no longer held. So, Hobbes responds that the social good will be dependent on forming social contracts between citizens.

In modern democracies like the U.S., we elect representatives to create laws that will ensure our security, freedom, and peace. Citizens implicitly agree to follow these laws (ie. the consent of the governed) by continuing to live here.

Hobbes identifies two main ways to enforce our social contract — through legal institutions and public opinion. Legal institutions include police, courts, and lawmakers who ensure compliance with laws. However, social norms also play a powerful role in maintaining order. Public opinion, particularly through social media, acts as an informal but significant enforcement mechanism. Individuals who break social norms — even if they don’t violate the law — face consequences like public shaming, canceling, or damage to their reputation.

Social Contract Theory benefits from the rules being mutually beneficial. It’s therefore obvious why someone would want to offer their cooperation (ie. they see the benefit). Hobbes’ theory also acknowledges that when one party breaks the contract, it justifies others not adhering to the contract anymore with them. SCT also limits the demands of morality, ensuring that they are reasonable while providing justification for civil disobedience when the government fails to uphold fairness.

However, Social Contract Theory has notable disadvantages, which Kant will bring into focus (cf. Sec. 7.2). Critics argue that when members of a society disagree, it’s unclear whether the minority must conform to the majority. The theory also heavily relies on self-interest and reciprocity, but this leaves out vulnerable groups like infants, nonhuman animals, or oppressed populations, who cannot reciprocate. Every society has members who are without, and Hobbesian mutual benefit says nothing about what is right for them. This marginalization raises concerns about the inclusivity and universality of Social Contract Theory as an ethical framework.

6.3 | Negative Liberty | Locke

The concept of freedom (Lt. libertas) has been championed in England since at least the 13th century. Back then, a group of English royals — through a series of impressive political machinations — had the English king sign the famous 1215 Magna Carta (Lt. “Great Charter”). Prior to the Magna Carta, whatever the king said was law. But, after 1215, no one in England would be above the law — no matter who he or she was. The Charter also promised that every Englishman would now have a legal right to a fair trial and that no one would be taxed again without representation. As for that representation, knights and freemen were gathered from each city in England to speak (Fr. parle) with the king. This gathering became known as the Parliament.

Over the next 400 years, English liberty continued to evolve, with some favoring more power for the government to secure the people and others vying for more personal freedom. This culminates in the 1642 English Civil War, which had a direct influence on the writing of Hobbes’ 1651 Leviathan. Today’s Anglosphere — including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US — all owe a tremendous debt to the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679). With his 1651 Leviathan, he set the framework for political discourse for his time, for us, and for untold generations to come.

Negative Liberty: Hobbes' Leviathan (1651)

Hobbesian conceptions of liberty fall into a category of political thought today called “Classical Liberalism.” Liberalism has obviously evolved from the 17th century to today. So we distinguish the liberalism of the 17th and 18th centuries (when “liberals” owned slaves and their wives couldn’t own land or vote) from contemporary liberalism by appending Classical to the former. Briefly, the spectrum from the political center-right to the political center-left is effectively: Progressivism <- Liberalism -> Classical Liberalism (See Sec. 6.6 for a full breakdown of the political spectrum).

In Center-Right, Classical Liberalism, freedom (ie. “liberty”) was conceived of as a kind of negation of authority. In modern political philosophy, Negative Liberty is freedom from external restraint and the interference of others. It is the “freedom from” things like political coercion and government control.

When Conservatives say “freedom,” this is generally what they mean.

For English thinkers like Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), John Locke (d. 1704), and John Stuart Mill (d. 1873), it is the government’s job to prevent chaos and maintain social stability. This means individuals must cede (only) the minimum level of authority necessary for the protection of the state. As a monarchist, Hobbes claims that a powerful authority (ie. a king) is required to maintain said social stability. Excepting his monarchal views, Hobbes’ ideas shaped all the democratic governments to come after him. The hallmarks of early modern Conservative Political Thought — God, King, and Country — are taken directly from Hobbesian theory.

Negative Liberty: Locke's Two Treatises on Government (1690)

Forty years after Hobbes’ work, John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government (1690) made significant contributions to the concept of negative liberty. Locke claimed that natural rights always precede government authority. Because of this, the government’s primary role is to protect our natural rights above all else. The younger Locke took the elder Hobbes seriously but did not always agree with his predecessor. Whereas Hobbes found that a strong monarch was needed to maintain order, Locke argued that a democratically elected government was superior to a king because a democracy rules by the consent of the governed. Locke even went so far as to claim that if the government — who only has the job because we grant our consent — fails to protect our natural rights, we are then allowed to rebel against it. And, of course, in 1776, that’s just what a bunch of revolutionaries did in the American colonies. 🇺🇸

For Locke, among our most cherished natural rights is the right to private property. For Locke, freedom means nothing if you cannot pursue your own wealth and happiness. In this way, Locke blazed a trail for the 18th-century Americans coming after him, who would one day use his laudable ideas to create their founding documents in the greatest political experiment ever conceived. The United States.

Negative Liberty: Mill's On Liberty (1859)

Finally, John Stuart Mill’s 1859 On Liberty made what has probably been the most lasting and profound contributions to the negative conception of liberty (ie. Classical Liberalism). Mill argues that no one can rightfully be deprived of personal liberty or property. In fact, his views on both property rights and the law bear a distinct Lockean flavor. Because, as Locke would say, if a law does not promote the general welfare, then it is an unjust law. Here, Mill is seeking to maximize happiness in Britain, so he’s looking for ideas that will have the widest, most optimific appeal (cf. Sec. 8.3). His noble efforts will culminate in the first wave of Feminist efforts in his and his wife’s later work, On the Subjection of Women (1869). In this and other works, we see Mill balancing his Utilitarian views with his insistence that individual rights be protected.

Mill promotes not just freedom from coercion but from censorship. For the British Parliamentarian (1865-68), freedom of speech is a fundamental right of democracy and must be upheld as a matter of national security and public trust. For society to grow and progress, all citizens must be free to express dissenting opinions and vote. These ideas from Mill have influenced the development of democratic systems all over the world and have helped millions to secure their individual freedom, human rights, and freedom from undue coercion and restraint.

6.4 | Positive Liberty | Rousseau

Having surveyed three Classical Liberal thinkers (ie. the political Center-Right), we now turn to a brief survey of Progressivism (ie. the Center-Left). After the end of Western slavery in the late 19th century, the concept of freedom continued to evolve. By the turn of the 20th century, Mill’s individualistic approach was too limiting for those at the bottom of the economy. With the rise of industrialization, the lack of legal regulation led to massive worker exploitation (cf. Sec. 10.2). Consequentially, workers began to unionize, claiming that freedom (from wage exploitation and unsafe working conditions) must be won through collective political action. Such collective action is evident, too, in the government interventions of World War I (1914-18). Here, individual sacrifices were made for the collective freedom of all in the allied nations (eg. France, the UK, Russia, the US). From the 20th century onward, freedom would be a collective responsibility as authoritarians and strongmen vied to overthrow Western democracy (cf. Sec. 6.6).

The Great Depression (1929-39) also illustrated the shortcomings of negative liberty. The economic collapse of the West revealed how regular folks could be ‘free from interference’ yet still lack the means to achieve the very basic needs of food, housing, and economic security in an industrialized society. This led to massive welfare reforms in many Western countries, where social safety nets were put in place to ensure that everyone — especially those most vulnerable in society — has what is necessary. Finally, the various advocacy movements of the 20th century — including women’s voting, labor reform, and Civil Rights marches — marked a shift in American political discourse toward collective, positive conceptions of freedom. Positive Liberty is having the resources required to pursue one’s most optimal social purpose. It is the “freedom to” live with things like publicly-funded education, public healthcare, and a welfare safety net in case tragedy strikes and you lose everything.

When Progressives say “freedom,” this is generally what they mean.

Rousseau: The Social Contract (1762)

The beginnings of Positive Liberty can be traced back to 18th-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778). In Rousseau’s 1762 The Social Contract (largely unrelated to Hobbes’ SCT), the French social theorist argues that the general will of the people must be the basis of all political decisions. By general will, Rousseau is gesturing to the autonomous will of the people to make their own choices. For Rousseau, a democratic government should be based entirely on the general will — not the influence of social élites, special interest groups, or corporations. From well-funded government services (ie. taxes), all citizens should have their natural rights protected and their basic needs met. The standard Center-Left position is that modern countries are so prosperous that our basic needs are not that great of a challenge anymore (eg. 1 in 10 homes in America sits unused). Foremost on Rousseau’s list of basic needs is public education. This is a standard point of focus for Progressive politics today. Rousseau claims that a publicly-funded education for children could not only cultivate a child’s ethics and creativity but enable that child to achieve their best possible self. Rousseau would go on to impact many modern political thinkers, particularly on the principles of social equality, democratic participation, and human rights.

Dewey: Democracy & Education (1916)

Half a century after Mill (d. 1873), the American educator John Dewey (d. 1952) contributed greatly to the positive concept of liberty. Like Rousseau before him, Dewey was enthralled by the relationship between freedom and education. His 1916 Democracy and Education claims that the two concepts are inextricably intertwined (cf. Foucault in Sec. 4.4) and that learning and practical problem-solving are crucial to the maintenance of any democracy. Here, Dewey emphasizes critical thinking and social responsibility in education — arguing that it is essential for citizens to be well-informed in order to make intelligent, practical political decisions.

Dewey’s concept of democracy is interesting. He sees democracy as a constant process of (re)construction, wherein political power is constantly rebalanced to serve the needs of the next generation. For Boomers, broadcast television raised new questions about government censorship that the Constitution doesn’t include. For Gen X, genetic engineering raises bioethical questions never before considered. For Millennials, smartphones raise questions about our rights to privacy and protection from government surveillance. For Gen Z, artificial intelligence raises questions about algorithmic media bias and job insecurity. And for Gen Alpha, augmented reality is raising new existential questions about embodiment, addiction, and transhumanism. These challenges could not be enumerated in the Constitution and, therefore, are ours to adjudicate as we rebalance our democracy and reevaluate our rights and responsibilities.

Dewey saw it as the job of government to ensure that all people share in the promise of social equality. As new concerns and technologies arise, Dewey points to the importance of public life and collective action in facing these challenges — arguing that all citizens need to participate in politics and the affairs of public life in order to achieve a healthy democracy. For Dewey, the pursuit of positive liberty was not only about individual rights but about the progress of society as a whole.

Rawls: A Theory of Justice (1971)

Finally, the American John Rawls’ 1971 A Theory of Justice took as its focus the concept of justice as fairness. That is, while many argue that justice is primarily about restoring something taken (ie. an eye for an eye), Rawls (d. 2002) saw the concept of distributive justice as the worthier view (ie. ensuring everyone has enough). Rawls argues that all individuals have inherent and equal dignity (cf. Kant in Sec. 7.4). From equal dignity, Rawls says we arrive at our equal rights. For Rawls, no citizen is left out in a just and prosperous society.

From his focus on equality, Rawls then cast his focus on vulnerable social groups and felt he had a solution to the old flaw in Hobbes’ Leviathan. His answer? A Thought Experiment he called the Veil of Ignorance. The idea behind the Veil of Ignorance is to imagine people creating a society and its laws — but without already knowing their social status, wealth, talents, gender, or any other characteristic that could potentially influence the decision-making process. This Veil ensures that individuals do not make biased or self-serving decisions that could harm or disadvantage vulnerable members of society. Rawls claims that by creating a society behind a Veil of Ignorance, we are more likely to agree to principles of justice that promote fairness, equal opportunity, and equal protection for all members of society.

For example, if before we were born we knew we had a 1 in 77 chance of living in a wheelchair, most of us would argue for wheelchair ramps and disabled parking in our society. Or if we had a 1 in 17 chance of hearing impairment, a 1 in 43 chance of blindness, or a 1 in 5 chance of needing psychiatric assistance — we would argue for universal rights to these things before we landed in that society. These, by the way, are the actual numbers for American society today. Economically, what if we considered that there’s a 1 in 3 chance of your family having less than $500 in savings? Rawls looks at numbers like these and argues for basic wealth redistribution (ie. taxes) such that everyone’s basic needs are met.

Rawls then presents us with two principles of justice — the Principle of Equal Liberties, which advocates for all individuals to have the same basic human rights, and the Principle of Equal Opportunity, which calls for equal access to social opportunities, such as housing and education. His point herein is not that everyone should have the same thing. That’s impossible. Rather, the Rawlsian perspective is that society is at its healthiest and most prosperous when the government ensures everyone has the same freedoms and opportunities to excel. For Progressives like Rawls, the nation that puts its most qualified people at the top (rather than nepo babies and the children of élites) is the most moral and prosperous place to live in.

6.5 | Political Philosophy Spectrum

In Secs. 6.3 & 6.4, we’ve seen the historical shift of Liberalism from Negative Liberty (Hobbes, Locke, and Mill) to Positive Liberty (Rousseau, Dewey, and Rawls). When political power goes unchecked, under the Horseshoe Theory of Politics, leaning either too far left or right, it can descend into authoritarianism. We will dive into authoritarianism in our next lesson (Sec. 6.6), but for now, we’ll say that authoritarian politics occurs when an individual or group exercises unchecked political power — often with little to no regard for individual rights and freedoms. As we drift from the Center-Right to the Far-Right, we eventually find authoritarian leaders practicing Fascism, wherein traditional power structures and cultural values are violently forced onto the people while promoting unchecked power in the hands of a single leader. Or, as we drift from the Center-Left to the Far-Left, we eventually find authoritarian leaders practicing Communism, wherein social equality is violently enforced through the radical, unchecked redistribution of private property. Either way, authoritarianism is at the extreme end of both left and right politics.

The opposite of authoritarianism is democracy (Gr. demos + kratos — rule by the people). Democracy operates under a social contract (eg. the U.S. Constitution), wherein political power is vested in the citizens of the state. In a representative democracy such as ours, we elect representatives (eg. members of congress) to vote and make laws on our behalf. All enemies of authoritarianism, in all its forms, should therefore make every effort to ensure fair, accurate, and widely available voting opportunities for a public that has been given truthful, verifiable information about political candidates.

One of the primary goals of a representative democracy is to ensure that power does not consolidate into an élite, authoritarian few. To counter this predilection, we send our representatives to meet and argue for our local needs, from our local vantage point, to the larger body politic (typically a state or national capital). The resulting arguments — so long as they’re done in good faith — are evidence of a thriving democracy. So what does the spectrum of political philosophies look like today?

Center-Right: Hobbes & Conservatism

Modern Center-Right politics is a political ideology that seeks to balance personal liberty with traditional values — such as faith, nationalism, and social conservatism. Center-Right politicians generally promote limited government intervention in our personal lives (cf. traditional values) while promoting economic freedom for the wealthy élite. They often support smaller governments, preferring less assistance, a large military, and lower taxes for the wealthy. While Center-Right politics affords equal protection for all groups, it often opposes the proactive enforcement of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies or other measures aimed at addressing historic or current inequalities.

Libertarian: Mill & Classical Liberalism

Libertarianism, rooted in the ideas of John Stuart Mill, is a Centrist political philosophy that values personal liberty above all other political concerns and seeks to defend liberty against both state and religious authority. Libertarians argue that government intervention in our lives should be kept to an absolute minimum, allowing individuals to make their own choices without interference. This includes minimal government assistance and reduced taxes and government spending (with which Conservatives generally agree). Libertarians also emphasize the protection of minority groups from the rule of the majority, promoting equal protection for all individuals (with which Progressives generally agree). Overall, Libertarianism seeks to limit the power of the government in favor of individual autonomy and freedom, often advocating for laissez-faire economic policies and individual responsibility.

Center-Left: Rawls & Progressivism

Modern Center-Left politics is a political ideology that emphasizes balancing personal liberty with social awareness, fairness, and distributive justice. This ideology promotes government intervention in the economy (eg. taxes, subsidies, and welfare) to ensure social justice while allowing the maximization of freedom in our private lives and matters of personal taste. The Center-Left favors a larger government than the Conservatives, with more assistance for vulnerable groups and fewer military actions. Additionally, they promote the imposing of heavier taxes on the wealthy élite to flatten out the growing difference between rich and poor. Center-Left politics also seeks to protect minority groups from majority rule, making efforts to eliminate discrimination and protect universal human rights.

6.6 | Against Authoritarianism • Haidt

Having surveyed the political Center-Right (cf. Hobbes), Libertarian (cf. Mill’s Classical Liberalism), and Center-Left (cf. Rawls) positions, we now examine how those political philosophies descended into authoritarianism — and the philosophers who argued against those regimes.

Authoritarianism & the Left | Chomsky & Zizek

In the 20^th century, Mao Zedong (d. 1976) overthrew the Democratic leadership of the Republic of China (RoC) and installed an authoritarian, Maoist-Communist regime. His Little Red Book (1964) becomes required reading in the new People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Little Red Book addresses 25 political topics over 267 quotations from Mao. It covers the centrality of the Maoist-Communist government and encourages the use of violence to suppress all political opposition to the ruling party. Famously, Mao’s text threatens Democracy with the notion that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Quotes like this were used to consolidate Mao’s power over the Chinese people.

In response, Noam Chomsky’s 1988 Manufacturing Consent levels harsh criticisms at the authoritarian nature of Mao’s leadership and the propaganda machinery that supported it. Chomsky (born 1928) argues that authoritarian regimes like Mao’s rely on propaganda to maintain their power and control of the population and that media (later on, this includes social media) plays a crucial role for the state in shaping public opinion and suppressing dissent (cf. Foucault in Sec. 4.4). Chomsky contends that Mao’s authoritarian regime distorted reality such that a cult of personality arose around Mao — rendering the chairman’s broad political authority unquestionable. This is the nature of authoritarian leadership and the primary method by which authoritarians seize democratic control from the people.

Slavoj Zizek’s more recent The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (2012) also takes aim at Maoist authoritarianism and the cult of personality that had been created around him. Zizek argues that Mao’s leadership had a total disregard for human life and that the Chinese Communist Party was ultimately a vehicle for Mao’s personal ambitions rather than the will of the Chinese people (cf. Rousseau’s general will). Zizek argues that Mao’s propaganda machinery created a false consciousness among the Chinese, wherein citizens were slowly convinced that Mao was incapable of making mistakes — or when his miscalculations were made obvious, they were simply hand-waved away by state-sponsored media. Such authoritarian, ideological control over a people has been used countless times throughout history to suppress dissent and maintain the power and control of an authoritarian élite.

Authoritarianism & the Right | Orwell & Arendt

On the political Right, we witnessed Authoritarianism rear its ugly head under the Italian leadership of Benito Mussolini (d. 1945). In his Doctrine of Fascism (1932), Mussolini, like Mao, emphasizes the centrality of the state and the subordination of the individual citizen to it. As Hitler’s most important European ally, Mussolini gleefully claims that the 20^th century will be “the century of authority, a century tending to the “right”, a Fascist century.” Much like his Nazi counterparts, Mussolini envisioned a fascist, totalitarian state in which the government exercised total control over the country — including control over the economy, suppression of anti-authoritarian books and films, and the political domination of minorities (eg. Jews, Romani, people of color, religious minorities, and LGBTQ citizens). In this way, authoritarians like Mussolini claim that individual rights and freedoms must be suppressed for the state to flourish.

George Orwell’s 1938 Homage to Catalonia criticizes authoritarianism and Rightist fascism from his firsthand wartime experiences fighting the Spanish Nationalists (who allied with Hitler and Mussolini). As with Leftist Authoritarianism in China, Orwell (d. 1950) saw the Right in Spain brutally suppressing all political dissent in an effort to maintain the authority of the political élites. Orwell decried their violent tactics as a clear threat to the values of democracy and human rights. The political concept “Orwellian“ comes from Orwell’s critical writings — giving expression to “alternative facts,” “indoctrination,” and “police state.”

After Orwell, Hannah Arendt’s 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism is a postwar summation of the authoritarian threats that had plagued 20th-century Europe. Her text took particular aim at both Mussolini and Hitler, their antisemitism, and their disruption of Western democratic processes. Arendt (d. 1975) argues that authoritarian totalitarianism occurs when the traditional structures that hold society together break down. People no longer feel like they ‘belong’ and ‘loyalty’ to one another begins to collapse in the face of rapid modern social change. In the wake of such change, the authoritarian élite manipulates the people — through media and violence — to engender the sense of belonging they feel is missing. Like John Stuart Mill long before her, Hannah Arendt’s work emphasizes the importance of individual freedom and the dire need for strong democratic institutions to protect against the rise of authoritarianism.

In Opposition to Authoritarianism: Haidt's The Righteous Mind (2012)

Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 The Righteous Mind (which I wholeheartedly recommend) argues that left and right politics are equal and opposite responses to authoritarianism, differing in how they each prioritize certain moral values. Haidt (born 1963) points to the fact that humans have evolved to be social creatures whose survival depends on group solidarity. This has led to the development of longstanding moral intuitions that guide our behavior and judgments. He identifies six fundamental moral values that are shared by all cultures: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.

According to Haidt, the Political Left tends to prioritize the values of care/harm, fairness/cheating, and liberty/oppression, while the Political Right tends to prioritize the values of loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. He argues that these different moral priorities are shaped by different cultural and historical experiences and that they reflect different responses to the problem of authoritarianism.

Other theorists working in Political Philosophy have posited that Center-Right voters are often driven further toward the Right out of feelings of disgust. Interestingly, there seems to be data to support the conclusion that Conservative thinkers are more prone to react to a “yuck factor” than their Progressive counterparts. Progressive thinkers have pointed out that this is why Progressives seem to have more tolerance for unexpected, unusual, or unique social situations. Meanwhile, other theorists have posited that Center-Left voters are often driven further to the Left out of feelings of envy. Conservative thinkers have pointed out that this is why Progressives seem to have more to say about the economic imbalance between the super-rich and the rest of us.

In summary, the Political Right and Political Left are both reactions against authoritarianism. Mao overcorrected with an interpretation of Communism that led to the starvation and deaths of millions. Stalin reacted similarly in the Soviet Union. In Europe, Hitler and Mussolini overcorrected with Fascist policies that inaugurated the utter destruction of democracy and the rule of law in Europe and cheered as innocent millions died in genocidal murder.

As we turn the page on this Ethics and Political Philosophy lesson, let us consider the real dangers of authoritarianism, the need to hear from voices and subjective experiences outside of our own echo chambers, and the shared desire of all fair-minded people to see our country succeed. While not everyone is fair-minded nor speaking from good faith arguments (cf. Post-Truth in Sec. 4.4), it is the case that a sustained, long-term victory against the ‘state of nature’ cannot be had without upholding the social contract of our shared participation in the democratic process.

So go take part in our shared democracy and vote!

https://teamrv-mvp.sos.texas.gov/MVP/mvp.do

Last Section: Character Ethics
This Section: Contractarian Ethics
Next Section: Deontological Ethics

The School of Athens | Raphael, ca. 1510
Here, Plato (left) and Aristotle (right) debate together as
the two pillars of Western thought.

Key Terms for this Section
Arete · Teleology · Golden Mean (Aristotle)
Natural Law · The Seven Basic Goods (St. Aquinas)

5.1 | What is Ethics

What is Ethics?

Having completed our first module, asking, “What can we know?“ we move on to our second module, where our central question will be, “What should we do?“ To answer this question, we turn now to Normative Ethics.

Ethics is the study of moral good. It explores how we live, treat each other, and what makes life valuable. Ethical questions address issues like how we judge right and wrong, how we balance personal needs with consideration for others, and how to resolve moral dilemmas like whether it’s justifiable to steal to feed one’s family or lie to protect a friend’s feelings.

Moral philosophers have developed various ethical frameworks to answer these dilemmas. These frameworks offer systematic theories of morality, such as those proposed by Aristotle (Sec. 5), Hobbes (Sec. 6), Kant (Sec. 7), and Mill (Sec. 8). These frameworks guide moral agents — those responsible for acting ethically — by helping them navigate ethical challenges. When we discuss ethics over the next four sections, here are a few things to keep in mind.

First, ethics is not the law. While legal systems are politically determined and subject to change, morality transcends legality. Historical examples like slavery or prohibition illustrate the fluidity of our legal system, while moral judgments are rooted in ethical reasoning. Therefore, recourse to “it’s wrong because it’s illegal” isn’t going to get us very far.

Second, our moral values — derived from our individual, cultural, and societal experiences — are generally insufficient for fully addressing complex ethical issues. Our general principles, like the Golden Rule or “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” may be helpful in casual settings but fail to provide nuanced answers to difficult dilemmas, such as capital punishment or whether to go to war. Similarly, practical conclusions, like, “I won’t speed today because I don’t want a ticket,” are not comprehensive ethical systems. Also, emotional pronouncements, like avoiding actions that feel wrong, are inconsistent and vary wildly between cultures, individuals, and even our current mood. Therefore, general principles, practicality, and feelings aren’t going to get us very far either.

Third, ethics requires logical justification for our moral actions, as we must justify our actions to our neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens. Philosophers have long debated how to live a good life, what makes actions right or wrong, and why we should act morally. These debates continue today — taking into consideration the interests of individuals, marginalized groups, and broader societal and even environmental concerns. In short, the best grounding for our ethical choices is moral philosophy.

Can Ethics be Argued Objectively? | Kant

In our last section (4.1), we learned how Kant split our view of reality into the noumenal world (things as they truly are) and the phenomenal world (things as we perceive them). While our empirical view of the world comes to us through the subjective filter of our senses, Kant maintains morality arises from pure reason. Like mathematical axioms (2+2=4) or scientific laws (E = mc²), ethicists generally work from the premise that ethical maxims transcend our subjective experiences. This position is called moral objectivism. Let’s take a moment and look at the alternatives to this view...

As moral objectivists, ethicists work to discover and defend moral facts (a moral fact is an ethical claim that can be proven true). Those who take morality seriously are moral realists. Those who don’t are moral nihilists. The moral nihilist claims morality is entirely made-up — that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with turning all the traffic lights green, or poisoning the water supply, or setting fire to a hospital. As you can imagine, it’s rather difficult to argue rationally for moral nihilism — a belief in nothing. So we’ll be working from the premise that morality is real. That gives us two more things to consider — moral objectivism and moral subjectivism. As previously stated, moral objectivists assert morality exists independent of human desire or decision (cf. Kant). On the other hand, the moral subjectivist asserts that, while real, morality is relative to our individual and/or cultural perspectives.

The Problems with Moral Subjectivism

The moral relativist arises from the adolescent level of relative thinking (cf. Sec 1.2). For the moral relativist, there are no moral experts. Anyone’s view is as good as anyone else’s. The two major branches of moral relativism are moral subjectivism and cultural relativism. Moral subjectivism asserts right and wrong are real but based in personal feelings. This simply does not work. If Bob feels we should have more gun control laws and Maya feels we should have fewer, moral subjectivism says that both are right because that’s how each feels. That clearly doesn’t work. It can’t be morally correct that we both should and shouldn’t have capital punishment, or that we both should and shouldn’t go to war.

The other form of moral relativism is cultural relativism — that right and wrong are real but are based on one’s culture. This too has a rash a problems. If morality is relative to one’s culture, then there are no moral experts. In American history, moral progress has generally been made when a few hero-outliers spoke up against the majority arguing for justice. Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, MLK, and Caesar Chavez all spoke out against the American majority for the rights of slaves, women, African Americans, and Hispanic workers. But where culture becomes the arbiter of morality, society can do no wrong. Under cultural relativism, moral progress grinds to a halt, both here and elsewhere. If cultural relativism is the case, then when other cultures deny their citizens the rights to vote, pray, publish, or peacefully assemble, we have no place to argue. In other words, human rights around the world dies in the shadow of cultural relativism, if morality is not an objective concept we can all argue about together as a species.

As such, this course will take a moral realist and moral objectivist perspective, wherein ethics is real, can be pursued objectively, and moral agents are ethically responsible for their choices.

5.2 | What is Virtue? - Aristotle

What is Character?

We return to ancient Greece. Having given Plato’s ideas some deserved focus (Secs. 2.2-3), we now turn to his most famous student, Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Why? Because the first book written on moral philosophy was Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Its first line reads, “Every art and every inquiry, and likewise every action (Gr. praxis) and choice, seems to aim at some good, and hence it has been beautifully said that good is that at which all things aim.” Here, Aristotle focuses on the importance of habit or practice (praxis) in becoming moral. Since ancient Greece, the good has been the goal for which we all [should] aim. Amidst that struggle, our character is revealed.

Our modern concept of character comes from the ancient Greek word kharasso, meaning “to engrave.” Ancient Greeks, like Aristotle, thought of one’s character as the deep mark or impression one makes on one’s own soul. This depth of character accrues over a lifetime of choices. It’s not at the surface — like how beautiful, popular, or on-trend you are. Character isn’t a tattoo, a meme, or shallow virtue signaling. It’s deeper. It’s a fundamental part of you that’s earned by making hard choices that influencers and the crowd often shun. Because seeking popularity (which usually requires embracing a kind of nihilism) is rarely a road to good character. Think of Hollywood actors. It’s unusual to find a celebrity who’s a genuinely good and selfless person. But you might be thinking, I want to be popular! I want to be an influencer! Why? For the vapid validation of a crowd who would turn on you in an instant if it helped grow their own popularity? We are taught these days to follow any dream we can imagine. But we are rarely taught to imagine a more moral version of ourselves. Aristotle asks you to imagine that. Imagine your most moral, virtuous self.

What is Virtue?

Aristotle described the moral exemplars of his time as possessing of arete. The Greek concept of arete is nothing short of the full realization of one’s potential. In a word, it’s excellence. But it’s so much more than that. It’s doing what you were born to do. The most elegant translation we can make of it into English is to call it “virtue” (Lt. virtus).

The virtuous person is a “good” person. A person’s virtue is acquired through a lifetime of practice. No one is born with moral virtue, as aristocrats often claimed. Nor does virtue come easily or quickly, as self-help books often claim now (eg. “30 Days to a Better You!”). No, everyone comes to their virtue (or lack thereof) honestly and over the course of years (cf. character).

What does virtue look like? Aristotle focuses on three chief areas of our moral lives: our reason, our desires, and the actions one takes in light of these two concerns. Aristotle understood that a person’s nature has both rational and nonrational components. We think (ie. reason) about with whom we’ll have a relationship, what career we want, and where we’ll make a life with those things. But we also hunger (ie. nonrational desire) for food, pleasure, and rest. For Aristotle, all this ties into our moral life. We must act with reason, or we become vicious. And we must act from moral desires, or we become weak.

For Aristotle, the vicious person (Gr. kakia) embodies evil — having developed corrupted reasoning and habits due to a lack of exposure to virtue. She believes her actions are justified because she doesn’t know better, making it difficult to change her behavior. While the weak person (Gr. akrasia) has little self-control. Though they desire to be virtuous, they fail to act on those desires.

So virtuous action arises from virtuous reasoning (eg. relationships, jobs) and virtuous desires (eg. dinner, sleep). Also, for Aristotle, no action taken with bad judgment can be called virtuous. If a person drives drunk into a tree and then subsequently gets his life together, the car collision was still not virtuous. Additionally, an action taken from unethical desires cannot be called virtuous. If a person cheats on her spouse and a child results from the affair, as beautiful as a newborn child is, the desire to commit adultery cannot be called virtuous. In this way, reason, desire, and action are central to Aristotle’s understanding of character and living with a focus on moral excellence.

Optional Video: The famous Marshmallow Test is a great example of the virtuous person being habituated toward patience and the good (auto-generated CC).

The Goal of Our Lives

Like most ancient philosophers, Aristotle asserts that all things have an inborn goal or purpose (Gr. telos), in which everything has an inherent function (Gr. ergon). This ancient ontological view is called teleology. For Aristotle, a thing is considered “good” when it fulfills this purpose. A good fire burns hot. A good knife cuts well. So, Aristotle argues, we homo sapiens (Lt. thinking ones) also have a unique function — to think and reason well. Thinking is the thing we do better than anything else in the world, which makes it our defining feature (ie. telos). Our highest goal, therefore, is to contemplate and seek our ultimate intrinsic good — happiness. However, Aristotle’s understanding of happiness goes beyond mere physical or sensory pleasure. There’s a deeper pleasure.

The Greeks had an amazing concept — eudaemonia — which literally means good (eu) spiritedness (daimonia). To live in eudaemonia means to live up to one’s best purpose, one’s best self, one’s best destiny. For Aristotle, eudaemonia is the ultimate purpose of human life, achievable only through living virtuously in moral excellence. While we may desire things like money, food, or friendships to satisfy other needs, happiness is desired for its own sake (ie. intrinsic) and is thus our highest goal. Eudaemonia is not the shallow pleasure found in material things but a profound state of contentment that arises from living a life of virtue. Aristotle asserts that happiness is the result of aligning our lives with moral virtues and that only through consistent practice of these virtues can we truly flourish.

Ultimately, for Aristotle, the purpose of life is not to seek momentary pleasure but to pursue a deeply fulfilled existence. This can only be achieved through a lifelong commitment to virtue and excellence. Flourishing, in Aristotelian terms, means becoming the best version of ourselves, not just in how we think but in how we act — by choosing the Good consistently. This pursuit of eudaemonia is the highest expression of our rational nature and the key to true, lasting happiness.

5.3 | Virtue Ethics | MacIntyre

How to Be Good

Aristotle lays out several preconditions for being virtuous, including education, prudence, and courage. Education is essential for developing moral awareness, enabling us to thoughtfully consider the consequences of our actions. As we are responsible for our choices, education helps us to understand all sides of a moral issue. Prudence, or the ability to make wise decisions, requires critical thinking and the application of wisdom to real-world scenarios. Courage is necessary to translate knowledge and good judgment into action. Without courage, even well-reasoned choices become meaningless.

In addition to the personal traits required for virtue, Aristotle also points out the preconditions for virtuous acts. Moral actions must be deliberate and guided by an understanding of what is morally right, rather than by chance or luck. Virtuous acts are done for their own sake, not for external rewards such as recognition or praise. If an act is motivated by self-interest, it is not truly virtuous but rather a form of self-promotion. Moreover, consistency is essential for virtue. Based on reason, moral actions should not fluctuate over emotions or fleeting desires. A virtuous person consistently chooses the right action in any given situation, regardless of external factors like mood or social pressure. They aim to develop themselves over a lifetime. But how do we know what moral choices to make?

Virtue Ethics | Moral Framework: Aristotle

In the heart of Delphi, the famous Greek temple to Apollo bore the inscription, “Nothing to Excess” (Gr. Meden Agan). Moderation was the keystone to Greek living. Greeks did not understand people who did not take wine, while the guest who drank to excess was shunned for his buffoonery! To drink a moderate amount, on the right occasion, and for the right amount of time — this was the Greek way. As such, Aristotle looked to individual virtues as targets of behavior, to which we must aim between two distasteful vices. On the one hand, there is a vice of too little. On the other, a vice of too much. But between these two vices (of too much and not enough) is the moderate virtue of just right. This is the Golden Mean, the middle ground between two opposing vices to which we focus our moral aims.

For example, consider the virtue of courage. How do we define courage? (Socrates asked this incessantly!) For Aristotle, we can understand courage as the mean between the surplus of recklessness and the deficiency of cowardice. Think of a medieval battlefield on which stand two opposing armies ready to attack each other. As your commander is giving a rousing speech before the battle commences, your friend Arthur races across the field with a rusty old sword, where he is swallowed whole by the opposing army. Was that courage? No. That was reckless. Now reimagine that scenario, only this time your commander finishes his speech, and the whole army begins to march in lockstep. But Arthur throws down his sword and nopes out. Was that courage? No. That was cowardice.

In the situation above, the courageous act would’ve been to fight alongside his unit. If Arthur runs into the enemy on his own, he has a surplus of courage (vice). If Arthur runs away when the fighting starts, he has a deficiency of courage (vice). Therefore, the virtue of courage is found between the vices of cowardice (the vice of too little courage) and recklessness (the vice of too much courage). And here’s a little tip: Aristotle points out that most virtues tend toward one side or the other. Courage usually leans closer to recklessness than cowardice. Generosity, as another example, usually privileges giving too much rather than too little, though both have their faults.

There are also some absolute virtues — like wisdom, prudence, and justice — which have no limits. There’s no such thing as too much wisdom or justice, only their absence. Similarly, there’s absolute vices — like theft, racism, or murder — which are wrong in any amount.

Virtue Ethics Now | MacIntyre

After the Scholastics took on Aristotle’s corpus of work (cf. Sec 2.5), their leading ethicist, St. Aquinas, redirected ethics toward a Medieval, God-centered discussion (cf. Sec 5.4). For roughly a thousand years, Aristotelian Virtue Ethics lay more or less dormant. Enter the Scottish American, Alasdair MacIntyre (born 1929).

MacIntyre rethinks Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics for the 20th century. First, MacIntyre looks to the moral utility of our modern social and communal practices (eg. sports, religious services, boardgames) and shows how these practices have moral value insofar as they cultivate moral character by teaching discipline, perseverance, and cooperation. In order to achieve excellence in these activities, one must aim for virtue. In this way, MacIntyre shows that our social traditions can have a profound impact and influence on our moral cultivation.

MacIntyre also takes a swipe at the promises of modernity (cf. Sec 3.2 & 4.4), by pointing out how the individuated fragmentation of moral reasoning in our modern society leads to moral subjectivism (cf. Sec. 5.1). Against this, MacIntyre stresses that Aristotelian virtues are not subjective qualities one chooses at will but are deeply rooted in historical and cultural traditions (eg. ancient Greece). Here, he calls for a return to a moral philosophy embedded within communities — where virtues like justice, courage, and honesty are practiced not in isolation but as part of a collective political effort to achieve shared goals. This serves a bold corrective to the information silos and echo chambers of our modern public sphere (cf. Sec 4.4).

Lastly, MacIntyre updates Aristotle’s concept of eudaemonia as part of a narrative unity of one’s life. That is, for a person to live in eudaemonia, their life must be understood as a unified and coherent story, wherein virtue serves as the foundation of their life story. A person’s life makes the most sense when seen through the lens of their moral goals. What virtues did they choose to live by? Where did they rise and fall? Such moral reflection on one’s actions and decisions gives purpose, shape, and identity to one’s life. It certainly has for mine.

5.4 | Euthyphro’s Dilemma | Socrates

Natural Theology

Greek philosophers like Aristotle sought rational explanations for natural phenomena. His metaphysical inquires explored causality, teleology, and ontology using ancient Greek reason. For example, when Aristotle argues for a “prime mover,” that which is responsible for the motion and order of the universe, he avoids appealing to stories of the Greek gods (cf. Sec 3.1). This was in contradistinction to the prevailing discourse in neighboring Israel, where the Torah’s representation of God’s nature and purpose in the world was bound up in revelation. As a Jewish, pre-Greek text, the Torah (ie. the first five books of the Bible) offers no rational arguments for God. Such talk would not become relevant until proselytizing traditions like Christianity and Islam had to produce compelling, reasonable claims about God to satisfy would-be converts to their respective religions.

As such, we can trace the rational, philosophical discussion of God back to the arguments of early Christian theologians — Greek readers who were fluent in both Jewish tradition and Greek philosophy. In this way, the Early Church Fathers developed Natural Theology in an effort to explain and defend their beliefs (cf. Sec. 2.4).

Back in Greece, Socrates discusses with his friend Euthyphro the relationship between the Good and the Gods. Socrates poses this question, “Do the gods say things because they’re good? Or are things good because the gods say so?” This classic question of ethics is known as Euthyphro’s Dilemma. This moral dilemma has two opposing philosophical choices or “horns,” which is generally how moral dilemmas go.

Euthyphro's Dilemma | Socrates

Option 1: Does God say things because they’re good?
The first option (or “horn”) of the dilemma posits that God says things “because they’re good.” But this would render God unnecessary to ethics. Why? Because in this scenario, God is recognizing “the Good” and then telling us about it. If this is accurate, it puts morality above God. Similarly, I may recognize that it’s cold outside, but that doesn’t mean I can control the weather. The outside temperature is beyond my ability to control. I can merely report on it.

Option 2: Or are things good just because God said so?
This second horn is represented by a way of framing ethics called Divine Command Theory. In DCT, you know right from wrong simply because God said so. That’s it. So, anything that God says is good. Even something you might find obscene, like child sacrifice. According to DCT, if God said do it, you must do it because you have no real ability to consider morality on your own. So you have no choice.

Now, by the phrase “God said it,” we generally mean something we interpreted in scripture or something a theologian said. Setting aside the infinitude of difficulties and dangers regarding theological translation and presentist bias, it’s worth noting the long history of bad actors claiming to speak for God. For instance, in the late 20th century, one American pastor convinced his congregation to move with him to the jungle, where he then murdered over 900 of his congregants. Reading this, you and I may feel shock and dismay over such an action, but without recourse to reason (ie. without the right to argue with God or His self-appointed messengers), how can we contradict such a pastor? We can’t judge him as evil if DCT suggests we aren’t equipped to judge right and wrong in the first place.

Do the gods say things because they're good? Or are things good because the gods say so? - Socrates

Examining the Two Horns of Euthyphro's Dilemma

1. We could simply embrace the first horn and posit that God is neither all-knowing nor all-powerful. And some religious traditions hold to this view. This theology usually goes something like this: So that we can exercise free will, God chooses to limit Godself. God could do miracles, but God doesn’t so that we can act as free moral agents instead. As we find in Genesis 18, we can change God’s mind.

2. Likewise, we could embrace the second horn, and abdicate our reason to God’s scripture. We could attempt to simply, “do as God says.” But there are a multitude of issues with this option. First, which scriptures are we counting as “what God said”? 15% of the world says God’s word is found in the Hindu Vedas. 25% say it’s the Qur’an. 31% say God speaks in the Christian Biblical canon — but while Catholic Christians say that canon has 73 books, Protestants claim 7 books fewer, and Orthodox Christians claim 8 books more. Secondly, even if we were to posit that, say, Protestant Christians have the correct texts, consider the multiplicity of viewpoints among Protestant denominations (eg. Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, etc). And even among those denominations, do people in the same denomination or even the same church believe exactly the same thing? Third, there are additional issues when considering how the Biblical text treats difficult moral issues like slavery.

In some passages, the Bible seems to condemn slavery. Consider the Jewish text which reads, “Whoever kidnaps a person... shall be put to death.“ (Exodus 21:16). Or the Christian text which reads, “Were you a slave when you were called? ...if you can gain your freedom, do so.” (1 Cor 7:21). Yet there are other passages that seem to condone slavery. Consider the Levitical offer, that “You may take slaves ...they may be your property.” (25:45-46). Or the admonishment of 1 Peter, “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle, but also those who are harsh.” (2:18). Now, we may puzzle over the context of these verses, or claim some theological position later replaced it, or even ignore it as irrelevant to us. But wait… If we’re using our reason to understand the text, then that means we’re not simply “doing what God says.” If the whole point of Divine Command Theory was to negate human moral consideration and interpretation, then it has failed us as a way of understanding both scripture and morality the moment we realize that reading any text is an act of interpreting and deciding what that text means to us. In this way, the very act of our reasoning negates Divine Command Theory as a viable solution to Euthyphro’s Dilemma.

5.5 | Natural Law Theory - St. Aquinas

Medieval Solutions to Euthyphro

3. A third option eventually arose that claimed by emphasizing God’s perfection, we might outmaneuver the first horn of Euthyphro’s Dilemma. To wit, a morally–perfect God definitionally could not command something evil. And yet, this still seems to put limits on an all-powerful God (cf. God “could not…”). This brings us to the option embraced by the overwhelming majority of Medieval Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

4. The fourth option is what is now referred to as Natural Law Theory. This theory goes something like this: there is no dilemma for the theist because morality mirrors the deep structure of the world itself. How do we know this? Because God is the Creator of our world, and it is a “good” world (Gen 1:31). And the very God who created our world is also the same God Who authored right and wrong. God is both Creator and Lawgiver of the same closed system. In the West, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all affirm this claim. And because all theists have easy and equitable access to the creation (unlike their divergent scriptures), we may understand the creation as a nonsectarian, Divine moral guide for living.

Natural Law Theory | Moral Framework: St. Aquinas

As the leading philosopher of the Medieval Scholastic movement (cf. Sec. 2.5), St. Aquinas worked tirelessly to bring philosophy to its fullest flower in Europe, by reconciling the wisdom of the ancient Greeks with his Christian faith. In his work, the Summa Theologica (lit. the Summary of Theology), St. Aquinas cites the work of divergent Aristotelian scholars like the Islamic philosopher Avicenna (d. 1037) and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (d. 1204), whom themselves had previously brought ancient Greek philosophy to bear in their respective religious communities and are today regarded as intellectual titans of Islam and Judaism (cf. Sec. 3.1).

In proper Aristotelian form, St. Aquinas set out to discuss the purpose and source of our laws in a systematic way (cf. teleology). In the Summa, he defines and expresses the purpose of human laws as “an ordinance of reason for the common good, [and] made by him who has care of the community.” That is, a law must be 1) derived from reason (not passion), 2) serve the common good (not special interests nor merely the wealthy), and 3) take as its goal the care of the community (not destroy the bonds that tie the community together). A just law must have these attributes at the very least.

So, why is Divine Command Theory insufficient for theologians like St. Aquinas? One reason is that our laws must be written “for the common good.” But you cannot know the common good (ie. what others need from you and each other) without reasoning with other people. Different people and different groups have different needs. This is the foundation of political philosophy and all its discontents. So, St. Aquinas, “Doctor of the Church,” sets out to explain what laws are, where they come from, and how we know when they are just. Because, for St. Aquinas, it is a Christian imperative to use one’s God-given reason to adjudicate laws and enact justice.

St. Aquinas finds four sequential levels of law. The first is Providence or the Eternal Law of God. The Eternal Law is the perfect thoughts and plans of God. We have no direct access to such plans (or we would be as gods ourselves), but St. Aquinas deduces the Eternal Law as the source of all other laws. The second level is the Natural Laws of God. This is the level at which we and all creatures participate — from stars to atoms, from the great web of life to house cats. Natural laws (from procreation to death) inform our lives. Yet, as rational creatures, we are not solely bound by them. We are more than animals and natural processes. For this reason, there exist two more levels of law.

St. Aquinas explains that the scripture, or Divine Law, is the revelation of God’s plan for us. These are the written out commandments that we are all expected to follow. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all follow a form of monotheism, the Old Testament prophets, and the Ten Commandments. It was St. Aquinas’ position that these texts (and the Christian canon) must be pored over with a heart of faith and a mind of reason to live morally.

The final level of law is our responsibility to create: Human Law. So, for St. Aquinas, there are two sets of written laws — the first is written by God (ie. Divine Law) while the second is written by us. Human laws govern things like taxes, government regulations, and traffic lights. It is our responsibility to create just laws, which, like Divine Law, must logically follow from Natural Law.

Seven Basic Goods | St. Aquinas

After much intense study of the natural world and society, St. Aquinas claimed to find universal values (ie. he’s a Moral Objectivist) to which every moral agent has rational access. In other words, when we do wrong, we naturally know it deep down. These values are, in fact, what make reasoning and the survival of our species possible. These values are known as the Seven Basic Goods, representing the fundamental values of morality for St. Aquinas.

1. The basic good of Life. Our natural drive toward self-preservation — that same drive shared by all creatures to survive — shows us the value of life in Natural Law. Its opposite would be murder, which is why Divine Law prohibits murder.

2. The basic good of Reproduction. Our natural sex drive is the very way we promulgate the species. The Catholic Church’s historic opposition to abortion arises from its understanding of abortion opposing the Natural Law and Divine Law of Reproduction.

3. The basic good of Education. Once we’ve had children, we must prepare them to engage in the world as moral agents. These first three goods we share with the animal kingdom. But we are also rational animals, so we must;

4. Seek God. In worship and scriptural study, we are called to observe the Divine Law. Theologians generally maintain that the basic good of Seeking God is necessary for us precisely because we have a knowledge of good and evil (unlike nonhuman animals), and the scripture shows us what is good.

5. The basic good of Living in Society. Once we are acquainted with the Divine Law, we can live together more harmoniously. After all, we are by nature social creatures. We depend on each other (eg. doctors, engineers, grocers, and police) to survive. To affect this survival, we must work toward Aquinas’ “common good.” This is accomplished by creating just Human Laws. It is imperative then that we do not break those laws.

6. Avoid Offense. Committing crimes against each other breaks the bonds of our community — which would miss the whole point of ethics. If we are going to live together, we cannot commit crimes against each other. And lastly, we must;

7. Shun Ignorance. This basic good can be seen in both a negative and positive way. On the one hand, we have a basic moral need to not ignore wrongdoing. On the other hand, we have a basic moral need to be creative and discover new ways of doing things. Our world has real problems. St. Aquinas understood this and implored us to use our observation and intelligence for good.

5.6 | Natural Law & Civil Rights - Rev. Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. on Natural Law Theory

In his moving and historic Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. posed a simple moral question from behind Alabama bars. How can one advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? In other words, how can we know when we should ethically resist a law, and when we ought to follow one? This was an essential question for a Civil Rights leader, who was sitting in jail for breaking American laws for a struggle with which most Americans did not at the time agree. For both his movement and those who came after him, he needed to make his case clearly. Dr. King points out in his Letter that there are two kinds of laws — just and unjust. Of course, to paraphrase St. Augustine, “an unjust law is no law at all.”

King, Just Laws, & Thou

In his Letter, King asserts that “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in... Natural Law.” Here we come to the reverend’s practical use of Christian philosophy. King defines just laws as those that “uplift” humanity and the human struggle, while unjust laws are those that “degrade” humanity. For King, the American legal institution of segregation was unjust precisely because it — as a set of laws degrading Americans — was at odds with Natural Law.

By Natural Law, the reverend was, of course, speaking theologically as well as philosophically. For MLK, the Natural Law is the order of the world ordained by God — the order which God set into motion. King uses the work of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber to elucidate the two opposing ways we relate to the world. We use an “I – it” relation when we relate to the mere things we use. I use a pen by picking it up and writing with it. But people, made in the image of God and imbued with sacred dignity, do not belong in this category. No, when we relate to people ethically, we are in an “I – Thou” relationship. Because the other with whom I speak is like me, a “Thou.” Thus, King explains that people and things belong on completely different ontological levels of God’s natural order.

For Dr. King, racial hatred and segregation don’t just feel wrong. They are at odds with the natural order of things.

Optional Video: MLK reading the letters from the Birmingham jail (auto-generated CC).

After St. Aquinas

Following St. Thomas Aquinas’ death in 1274, his Summa was left unfinished. Over the next two centuries, major crises began to unfold including the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), the Great Famine (1315–1317), and the Black Death (1347–1351). These hardships caused a growing disillusionment with the Church’s ability to maintain societal stability. We will pick up on this modern thread in Sec. 6.1 with our discussion of Thomas Hobbes.

As to Natural Law Theory, the greatest benefit St. Aquinas brings to Medieval morality is his claim that humans are naturally attuned to basic moral values and that we can discern these values through reason, as we ponder the creation. However, as the fallout of the 14th and 15th centuries followed, serious questions about natural law arose. First, if we are so naturally aligned with moral goods, why did the Medieval Church fail to follow them on so many occasions? While ignorance can explain some moral failings, the Church leadership was fully aware of the rules they were breaking. This vexed many a fan of St. Aquinas.

Later, modern critics like David Hume (d. 1776), argue that Natural Law wrongly conflates the “is” of metaphysics with the “ought” of moral philosophy. Hume’s is/ought distinction suggests that we cannot derive moral obligations from mere facts about the world. The two are ontologically distinct categories of thought.

Modern science advocates also point out that Natural Law Theory assumes an anthropocentric view, implying that the universe was made for human beings to understand God’s will. However, much of the universe has no apparent relation to human life (eg. the Andromeda galaxy). Additionally, there are natural elements like arsenic and anthrax that are harmful, challenging Aquinas’ idea of “natural” equating to the “good.” The existence of purely harmful creatures like mosquitoes (which cause immense human suffering with no positive value), complicates the idea that nature is inherently good.

However, all of these concerns will be allayed with the arrival of Social Contract Theory, courtesy of Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679) in Sec. 6.

Last Section: Thinking today
This Section: Character Ethics
Next Section: Contractarian Ethics

Ludwig Wittgenstein | Moriz Nähr, 1930

Key Terms for this Section
Thing-in-Itself (Kant) · Phenomenal World (Kant)
Embodiment (Merleau-Ponty) · Language Games · Post-Truth

4.1 | Early Phenomenology • Kant

The Kantian Revolution

The two people who can best lay claim to revolutionizing philosophy in the last 2,300 years have been Aristotle (cf. Sec. 5) and Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant fundamentally reorganized philosophy such that, in the 18th century, it shifted focus from ontology to epistemology. That is, since antiquity, philosophy had largely followed Aristotle’s ontological model, which centered around questions of what is (ie. the nature of existence, a thing’s form, its function, etc.). Aristotle’s (d. 322 BCE) views became the foundation of Medieval Scholastic philosophy and theology (cf. Sec. 2.5), wherein thinkers grappled with such questions for a thousand years. However, in the modern period, Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) shifted our focus to questions like what it means to think and how we know things at all.

Why the change?

German Kantian theory refocused philosophy on the human thought process in response to the ongoing 1700s debate between Cartesian Rationalism (Descartes, 1641) and British Empiricism (Locke, 1689). While Descartes held that knowledge is rooted in the mind, Locke countered that knowledge comes from sensory experience. The first crowned the mind as king and doubted our senses. The latter crowned the senses and doubted the mind. Yet both Rationalism and Empiricism operated under the same assumption — that we can access an objective view of reality. Kant would prove them both wrong.

In fact, in less than a decade, Kant would prove many early modern philosophers wrong. His three major criticisms of philosophy are the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of Judgment (1790). Modern philosophers quote these so often that they took on the nicknames of the First Critique, the Second Critique, and the Third Critique.

In his First Critique (1781) of early modern philosophy, Kant explores theoretical reason, focusing on how we think about the natural world and the limits of our knowledge. This is the focus of this lesson, 4.1. In his Second Critique (1788), Kant explores ethics, which he considers practical reason, by investigating how we can discover absolute moral laws (cf. Sec 7). And in his Third Critique (1790), Kant bridges the gap between the theoretical and the practical by analyzing our aesthetic judgment and taste (cf. 13.1).

Kant's First Critique (1781)

Kant’s first swipe at early modern philosophy came in 1781 when he successfully argued against both Rationalism and Empiricism. What the rationalists got right was that some a priori knowledge is possible (ie. knowledge without experience). Certain truths (which Kant calls analytic statements), like “all bachelors are unmarried,” can be known simply by the meaning of the words themselves. We don’t need to empirically investigate whether every bachelor is unmarried. This is true simply by the meaning of the words. All apples are fruit. All triangles have three sides. And all bachelors are unmarried. These statements are true because of the relationship between apples and fruit, triangles and three, and bachelors and marriage. Sure, but to paraphrase the Scotsman David Hume (d. 1776), such analytic statements are tautological (ie. they’re just repeating the premise). They don’t expand our knowledge of the world. So, Kant tends to ignore analytic statements.

On the other hand, recall in their empirical criticisms that Locke (d. 1704) claims knowledge comes from perceiving the world. And Berkeley (d. 1753) extends this to claim existence itself depends on the mind’s perception. Those are some big claims! Let’s start with what the empiricists got right. Claims that expand our knowledge but need sensory experience to confirm the claim (like science) are what Kant calls synthetic statements. Kant points out that the empiricists are right insofar as synthetic statements expand our knowledge of the world. For example, “all bachelors are messy” is a synthetic statement because it adds new knowledge to the word “bachelor.” We could investigate this like social scientists and determine if all bachelors are, in fact, messy.

However, Kant rejected the Empiricist claim that experience alone could fully account for knowledge. While knowledge depends on experience, it is not entirely derived from it. Instead, the mind organizes and shapes experience through our mental categories (eg. time, space, and causality). These a priori structures of the mind make our experiences intelligible but also limit our perception and understanding of the world.

Kantian Phenomenology

Wait. Think about that. The a priori structures of the mind make experience intelligible but also limit our perception of the world. So, our perception of reality is limited? Yes, and ever since Kant pointed this out, none of our philosophical categories have ever been the same.

Try to imagine the world outside of our experience of it — filled with things outside of our perception of shape, color, depth, sound, texture, or even conceptual frameworks. Kant refers to such a view as the noumenal world — the world preceding or outside of our perception. In such a noumenal world, where something is not perceived or even considered by us, a thing would be a thing-in-itself (Ger. ding-an-sich). Such a conceptual thing would have its own, objective existence outside of our mental categories, perception, and cognition. This, Kant points out, would be the nature of an ‘objective view’ of the world that the empiricists claim to observe.

But Kant rightly argues that we never actually encounter this noumenal world because our minds actively shape how we experience reality. We, in fact, have no direct access to the world. Such a noumenal world definitively remains forever beyond human perception. And, as Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951) famously says, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” In other words, if we can’t make sense of the noumenal world, then even if it does exist — there is nothing meaningful we can say about it.

What we can speak on is our experience of the world — the tree we see, the music we hear, the justice we are exposed to — the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world is the world as we human beings experience it. This is not a direct reflection of the noumenal world but is instead constructed by our minds. Kant argues that human cognition organizes our sense data (eg. seeing, hearing, feeling) in ways that make that data meaningful to us. Think about it. We don’t see the world the bat sees. We don’t hear the world the cricket hears. We don’t taste the world the octopus tastes. Rather, we perceive the phenomena of the world through the filter of our own subjectivity. Truth, therefore, is always mitigated by our own subjective perception.

The jaw-dropping paradigm shift Kant brings to philosophy is this — no one has access to an unfiltered, objective view of reality. We can only experience the world as it appears subjectively to each of us. And since everyone’s mind constructs their own experience of the world somewhat differently, the perspectives of different people are crucial for us to see the world more fully.

The philosophical study of the ways we perceive the phenomena of the world is called Phenomenology, and it’s been going strong for 200 years.

4.2 | Late Phenomenology • Merleau-Ponty

Intentionality | Husserl

This is how Kant (d. 1804) begins to shift modern philosophy from ontology (what is) to epistemology (what can be known). It turns out what can be known to us is filtered through our own subjective experience. My experience of Texas differs from yours, your neighbors, or their families. Different ages, ethnicities, and social classes bring different experiences, perspectives, and cognitive biases to our interpretation of “Texas.” So, there is no objective view of Texas — no “real Texas” — only the Texas each of us has subjectively experienced.

We must also account for Heraclitus (cf. Sec 2.1), whom we can imagine saying, “You can’t step into the same Texas town twice.” That is, if you leave your hometown for a few years, the town changes, and you also change. In sum, what Kant points out millennia after Heraclitus is an objective view of “Texas” (ie. the noumenal world) is not logically possible. We only have access to a phenomenal view of Texas through our own constantly adjusting mental categories.

Recall now St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument (cf. Sec 2.5), wherein the archbishop distinguishes between objects that exist in the imagination and objects that exist in reality. In the 20th century, Austro-German philosopher Edmund Husserl (d. 1938) points out that St. Anselm is discussing the mind’s ability to think about objects regardless of their realness. Modern philosophy refers to this consciousness tendency as intentionality. Husserl focuses phenomenology on intentionality by asserting that every mental act is always directed at something. There’s no such thing as a ‘neutral state of consciousness.’ As beings capable of consciousness, we are always conscious of something (even if that something doesn’t exist in reality). This advances our concept of rational thought from a self-contained, Cartesian self-awareness (”I think, therefore I am”) to the outward directedness of our consciousness. We do not merely “think” in the Cartesian sense. With various levels of intentionality, we are always “thinking of something.” Husserl shows us that consciousness always has a direction.

Thrownness | Heidegger

Husserl’s teaching assistant and successor, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (d. 1976), continues to build upon the ways humans know about the world. For Husserl, consciousness is an active, world-constituting pursuit driven by our intentionality. However, Heidegger focuses on a more passive, fundamental aspect of existence. That is, before we actively direct our intentions toward something, we are always already thrown into a world not of our choosing. Heidegger calls this thrownness (Ger. Geworfenheit). Here, Heidegger is pointing to the raw, undeniable givenness of our existence. If the central question of this module is “What can we know?” Heidegger is pointing out that the facticity of our existence already shapes our knowledge of ourselves and the world — our historical context, circumstance, relationships, and responsibilities — before we can even attempt to actively direct our thoughts in a particular direction.

Our context is irresistible. We cannot ignore it. Nor can we wholly adopt the perspective of, for example, a Chinese diplomat from the 14th century or a French nun from the 18th century. We can’t even read their texts without inserting ourselves into them! This is because we cannot help but think from the foundation of (and with the assumptions inherent in) our own time, place, and existence. So, like Husserl, Heidegger also proves we cannot achieve a complete, objective understanding of a thing. Our existential thrownness both shapes and limits what we can know.

Embodiment | Merleau-Ponty

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (d. 1961) builds on both Husserl’s intentionality and Heidegger’s concern with the limitations of our intentionality (ie. thrownness) by focusing on the role of the body in experiencing the phenomenal world. Our perception and understanding of objects are inseparable from our physical interaction with them. This means that our cognitive intentionality involves more than our mental acts — whether active (cf. Husserl) or passive (cf. Heidegger). Thinking involves our entire body.

Here, Merleau-Ponty discredits the mind-body dualism of Plato and Descartes, who divided the world into two — our physical reality and a kind of disembodied abstract world of reason to which the mind can aspire. But Merleau-Ponty points out that our bodies deeply influence our perception and understanding of the world, in a concept he calls embodiment (ie. ‘embodied cognition’). We don’t just process information in our heads like software. Rather, our body immerses us in the world in ways that fundamentally shape our understanding. In other words, thinking is not just a brain-based activity.

Our metaphors are grounded in physical experiences (eg. I’m looking forward to the future). Our language is influenced by our physical interactions (eg. when we say “kick,” the brain’s motor areas activate as if we were kicking). Our perception of distance varies based on our fitness and pain level. Our memories are more easily recalled when we smell something familiar. When veterans hear sounds that remind them of their deployment, a post-traumatic episode may be induced. The network of bacteria in our gut biome (ie. the ‘second brain’) affect our cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, and decision-making. In school, teachers often use gestures to reinforce language lessons. Studies show active people retain information better when their movement is less restricted. Facial expressions and body posture affect how we process emotional information. Our decisions are influenced by our sensory experiences (eg. seeing water cues our thirst). And while socializing, we tend to mirror the nonverbal behaviors of those with whom we agree or wish to join. These are just a handful of the examples phenomenologists use when pointing out (see?!) the centrality of the body when it comes to thinking.

All of this to say, the body is not merely a neutral substrate upon which consciousness occurs. The body is part of our cognition. We cannot separate our bodies and lived experiences from our understanding of the world or ourselves. This underlines the importance of the phenomenological project for understanding who we are and what we can know.

4.3 | Language Games • Wittgenstein

Language as Games | Wittgenstein

Having looked at intentionality (the directionality of the mind), thrownness (how our context shapes the mind), and our embodied cognition (how the body shapes the mind), we now turn to how language shapes our mind. Language is our preeminent tool for representing reality. It’s how we make sense of the world. So, it’s critical to understand how language works as we ask what it is we can know. The German Enlightenment poet Johann Herder (d. 1803) first argues that language shapes how people experience the world. For example, many pre-contact Indigenous languages lacked a word for “ownership,” which meant the concept of land belonging to a person or government was absent from their worldview. They had no laws or moral categories like ‘our land,’ ‘their land,’ ‘annexation,’ or ‘trespassing.’ Instead, theirs was an ethic of harmony and necessity.

In this way, language dramatically shapes how we interpret the world. The study of meaning in language and symbols is semiotics. The first semiotician was the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (d. 1913), whose work introduces the concept of the sign. According to Saussure, all signs comprise two parts: the signifier (the form of a word or symbol) and the signified (the concept it represents) as part of the deep, underlying structure of language. In other words, the signifier is the word “apple” or a picture of an apple, while the signified is the apple itself.

This ‘underlying structure’ idea of language was known as linguistic structuralism(1920s-60s). Herein, the elements of language are defined by their relation to other elements within a closed, stable structure. Enter, Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951). The Austrian philosopher challenged Saussure’s idea of a fixed, static system of language by arguing that the meaning of words is not inherent but arises from their use within specific contexts. Rather than having a static structure, Wittgenstein represents language as a series of games — each governed by its own rules and practices. Wittgenstein points out that the meaning of a word depends on how it functions in a particular context (ie. game).

For Saussure, language was a static, coherent structure. But for Wittgenstein, language is a dynamic, context-dependent set of constantly shifting games that we use to interact with one another. This mirrors the same emphasis that the phenomenologists place on context. For example, think about how certain words or phrases are used today in the context of meme culture (”it’s giving...”), gaming jargon (”camping”), or DMing (”💀”). Following the rules of these signs in our culture today reifies belonging to a cultural ‘game’ of a particular time, place, and people. Just as “moll buzzer” (1870s), “woofy” (1920s), or “ginchy” (1950s) may now be pastiche, but were on-trend in their day.

Wittgenstein rejected the notion of a universal, underlying structure of language. Instead, he proposed that language’s value and meaning are derived from its practical use in a given time, place, and context in a dynamic he refers to as language games.

Magritte’s 1929 “The Treachery of Images,” where the artist famously declares in French, “This is not a pipe.”

Deconstruction | Derrida

Martin Heidegger (d. 1976) once remarked that it was the philosopher’s job to creatively and rigorously critique the concepts that came before us. He referred to this process destruktion. The French Algerian philosopher Jaques Derrida (d. 2004) put his own spin on this Heideggerian notion in a concept he calls deconstruction. For Derrida, deconstruction is the philosopher’s task to rethink our inherited assumptions to make room for new ideas. To be the Socratic ‘gadfly’ of our discipline.

Derrida’s deconstruction takes on Wittgenstein’s view of language — that meaning is always context-dependent — to say that no text has a single, essential, eternally fixed meaning. He critiques the idea of objective truth in language, asserting that there is no external reference point or “correct” word for any given thing. Unlike Plato’s ancient epistemological view, which presupposes an “Ideal World” from which ideas originate, Derrida argues that all knowledge is mediated through language, echoing Kant’s skepticism (ie. the noumenal world).

Central to Derrida’s claims about language is différance — the notion that words derive meaning only in relation to other words, forming an endless chain of differences. Like Wittgenstein’s “language games,” Derrida contends that words function through creative play. But alas, there is no final or correct meaning. This means language is inherently unstable — words have multiple meanings, which change over time and in different contexts. The evolution of language will never end.

Metanarratives | Lyotard

Given all of this epistemological instability, we come to realize none of us as individuals have access to a completely objective view of the world. Our agency as thinkers is informed and limited by our consciousness (cf. Husserl), context (cf. Heidegger), and bodies (cf. Merleau-Ponty). Our thinking is also limited by the constantly shifting (cf. Wittgenstein), sheer ambiguity (cf. Derrida) of language. Language is irreducibly complex. By its very nature, it cannot be boiled down to ‘what it really means.’ For Derrida, there is no objective truth in language. There will always be slippage, misunderstanding, and différance in our ever-evolving litany of signs.

Taking a step back, the German philosopher GWF Hegel (d. 1831) once described history as the millennia-long process of resolving all of our contradictions until ‘absolute truth’ could be attained (cf. Sec 10). But by the 20th century, philosophers had become incredulous of such totalizing projects or stories. ‘Totalizing’ means attempting to create a comprehensive, all-encompassing narrative that can explain all knowledge, values, and phenomenal experience. This project begins in the Renaissance but reaches its zenith with Hegel (cf. Sec. 10). After Hegel, everyone who tries to reduce humanity to ‘one totalizing story’ is subsequently torn down.

• The Logical Positivists attempted to reduce all knowledge to scientific verification.

• The Structuralists (like Saussure) attempted to reduce all language to an absolute, unchanging structure.

• The Marxists attempted to reduce history to a single story of class struggle (where equality is the answer).

• The Nazis attempted to reduce history to a single story of racial supremacy (where genocide is the answer).

• Today, promoters of the Singularity attempt to reduce history to a single story of emancipation via technology.

Such overarching narratives are referred to as metanarratives by the French sociologist Jean–François Lyotard (d. 1998). A metanarrative is a modern story that attempts to subsume all other stories in an effort to emancipate us with its absolute truth. It’s the story that makes all other stories make sense. Marx, for example, claims that nothing makes sense about history until you see the world through the lens of ‘class struggle’ (cf. Sec. 10.2). For him, class struggle explains religion, economics, war, peace, love, the sciences — everything. In the 20th century, Lyotard became skeptical that one story could account for the great variety of human experiences and phenomena. He referred to the critiques of metanarratives as ‘postmodern’ critiques. That is, ‘the critiques that question the dangerous, totalizing certainty of the 19th and 20th centuries.’

If ever there was a misused or misunderstood philosophical term, it’s postmodernism.

4.4 | Post-Truth World • Arendt

Postmodern Critique | Foucault

Postmodern critique focuses on the contingent, unstable, multi-faceted nature of knowledge to challenge those (like Hegel or Marx in Sec. 10) who attempt to totalize knowledge. Postmodernism is not, itself, a competing, totalizing claim about truth. Rather, postmodern critique stems from those philosophers like Lyotard, who became incredulous that one totalizing story (like Marxism) could explain everything. In this way, it’s best to think of postmodern critique as a set of tools used to resist totalizing claims (like Marxism or any of the bullets listed in the previous section).

One such philosopher is the French historian Michel Foucault (d. 1984). As a student of history, Foucault is critical of how powerful institutions (ie. governments, schools, the media) produce, legitimize, and distribute information in such ways as to reinforce our own self-regulation. Today, such biopower keeps us in self-imposed information silos of social media — echo chambers of increasingly biased, unchecked information. In this milieu, we become passive (rather than critical) consumers of information that reifies existing power structures. Critical thinking and meaningful debate end entirely as we sit back, confident of our poorly-formed views as we’re fed a diet of algorithmic content that never takes us beyond the comfort of our preexisting beliefs.

So here’s how postmodern critique gets misunderstood. Foucault interrogates specific fields of study to reveal their underlying assumptions and power relations. What he’s not doing is claiming there’s no such thing as “truth.” On social media, postmodern critique is often mistakingly portrayed as a form of nihilism — a rejection of truth (cf. Sec. 11). But properly understood, postmodern critique is a soulful search for ‘truth,’ focused on peeling back the layers of ideology that power structures have put into place (in an effort to maintain their power). Modern social norms like heteronormativity, psychiatric health, surveillance, citizenship, and economic productivity were questioned by Foucault in an attempt to reveal how governments, schools, and the media normalize these categories for the sake of social control. But Foucault was no nihilist. He cared deeply about wisdom, truthful reporting, and political justice.

In our 21st-century context, postmodern critique questions social media and media reports that shape public perception to serve those in power. Through repetition, false statements become believable through familiarity. By focusing on dramatic events, less sensational news (eg. local news) is set aside as our cognitive bandwidth is limited. This tendency distorts our view of the world, creating the sense that we’re in more danger than is honestly the case. Again, because of our limited cognition and the algorithmic nature of social media, group polarization becomes amplified — reinforcing biases and political extremism. Add to this the nefarious efforts of enemy nations who use bots to weaponize our social media and pit Americans against each other. Finally, confirmation bias causes us to seek and accept information that aligns with our preexisting beliefs, entrenching power structures that become more powerful the more we become polarized.

Postmodern critique does not argue against the existence of truth. Rather, postmodern critique is concerned with the ways power and media distort our sense of truth.

“My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous.” - Michel Foucault

Living in a Post-Truth World | Arendt

The German Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (d. 1975) knew well the relationship between political power and truth, having been arrested in Germany by the Nazis at age 26. From 1941 onward, Arendt lived in New York, became an American, and spent her career critiquing totalitarianism. A totalitarian regime is characterized by the concentration of power by an authoritarian leader or autocrat and the increasingly small circle of people they trust.

Arendt explored how totalitarian regimes maintain power by manipulating the media. In Truth and Politics (1967), she distinguishes between immutable factual truth and subjective political opinion. Arendt warns that when facts become subsumed by propaganda (ie. ideological opinion), totalitarianism is not far behind. Historical facts, scientific findings, and democratic values cannot afford to be overtaken by ideology. The cost, simply put, is the erosion of the public trust in a nation’s democratic institutions. The ultimate result of ideology overtaking a nation’s public discourse is indoctrination — where contradictory empirical evidence no longer changes voters’ minds. Once a nation crosses that line, authoritarianism is generally the next logical step. It was for Germany in 1933.

In the 1990s, “post-truth” became a term American political commentators used to describe our politics. In 2016, it was the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year. What does it mean? Post-truth is a state of political affairs wherein factual truth (cf. Arendt) has less influence on public opinion than appeals to emotion and ideology. How did this come about? First came the proliferation of competing truth claims across social media. Then, the decline of traditional journalism as a reliable adjudicator of competing truth claims. Next, the proliferation of algorithm-driven media — which filters news, reinforces echo chambers, and fragments the public sphere. Fourth, big data analytics prioritizing persuasion over education and substance. Fifth, the rise of bots (software that mimics human behavior), set up by bad actors and enemy nations to shape our political discourse and turn us on each other. And lastly, the growth of influencers who use emotional appeals to promote their branding rather than focus on factual accuracy. In such a distracting environment, social distrust and a “post-truth” sensibility become the norm.

The Third Option | Frankfurt

Today, the rhetoric of politicians, celebrities, and other media figures is generally geared toward excitement and audience engagement rather than factual truth. Moreover, their audiences share their disregard for the truth — instead focusing on the speaker’s celebrity and symbolic appeal. Here, truth becomes irrelevant in a surprising way. The American philosopher Harry Frankfurt (d. 2023) notes that epistemologically, we used to adjudicate between truth-telling and lying. But in the post-truth world, there is a third category.

In his work, On Bullsh*t (2005), the Princeton professor points out that both the truth-teller and the liar have regard for the truth. The truth-teller aligns her statements with the truth, while the liar recognizes they are lying about the truth. However, the bullsh*tter persuades without regard to truth or falsity. They will mix truth and falsehood openly and randomly — counting on the sheer gravity of their celebrity to persuade the crowd. Before social media, getting caught in a lie could be the end of a politician’s career. But in a post-truth world, an indoctrinated audience will often treat lying with amused indifference. This is how truth and the love of wisdom become irrelevant to a culture.

What becomes of philosophy when the search for truth becomes irrelevant to a society? What can be known at that point?

Last Section: Scientific Thinking
This Section: Thinking Today
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René Descartes | Frans Hals, ca. 1649

Key Terms for this Section
Rationalism · Cogito Ergo Sum · A priori · Empiricism · Falsifiability

3.1 | Rational Thinking • Avicenna & Maimonides

Philosophy South of Europe

Before the 600s, the Arab world had no written literature. While Israelite Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Persian Zoroastrians brought countless texts to Arabia, the Arab world had no books of their own. This changed with the 7th century Qur’an. The prophetic message of Islam spread as a written text from Medina to Baghdad and onward as far east as India and as far west as Spain. This new, flowering Islamic civilization would be a thoroughly literate culture, as their religious miracle wasn’t a land (like the Jews) or a messiah (like the Christians). No, the chief miracle of Islam was the Qur’an. And their thirst for the written word was only beginning.

In the century prior, the Christian emperor Justinian had closed Plato’s Academy (529), ushering in a Dark Age that would spread over Europe for a thousand years. As Europe languished intellectually, the Islamic world to the south became the chief custodians of Western philosophy. They continued to study and add commentary to the works of the Ancient Greeks and laid the groundwork for much of the later development of the Western philosophical tradition we enjoy today.

The 700s-1300s are known to historians today as the ‘Golden Age of Islam’. Al-Kindi (d. 873) was among the first Arabs to contribute to the Medieval study of Classical Greek Philosophy. He worked to harmonize the ideas of Plato and Aristotle with Islamic theology in ways St. Aquinas would mirror 400 years later in Christendom. Al-Farabi (d. 950) applied Plato’s Republic to Islamic governance and claimed philosophy was necessary for understanding the divine truths of Islam. Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037) used Classical Philosophy to advance medicine. For centuries, his Canon of Medicine was required reading for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim medical students. And Averröes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198), perhaps the most gifted Islamic philosopher in history, reconciled Aristotle’s philosophy with Islam. His work directly influenced the Christian Scholastics of Europe.

St. Aquinas (cf. Sec. 2.5) borrowed heavily from Islamic philosophers to create his Summa Theologica. His study of Avicenna’s distinction between essence (what something is) and existence (that something is) helped St. Aquinas develop his theological description of God. Likewise, his study of Averröes’ commentaries on Aristotle were crucial to St. Aquinas’ writings. In fact, St. Aquinas often referred to Averröes as “the Commentator” of Aristotle throughout the Summa. High praise, indeed, for a Muslim philosopher in Medieval Christianity’s most celebrated philosophical and theological text.

Avicenna & the Cosmological Argument

Medieval Islamic philosophy posited that all good things, including philosophy, must come from God. This is not at all surprising, given that the 7th century Qur’an uses logic and natural philosophy to describe God’s nature (eg. in reference to ex nihilo creation (52:35), causality (39:62), omniscience (17:85), teleology (21:16-17), and the omnipresence (2:115) of God). Likewise, Islamic philosophers like the Persian Avicenna argued that God’s existence could be rationally proven along Aristotelean lines. This became known as the Cosmological Argument for God.

1,300 years prior, Aristotle posited a metaphysical principle called the “Prime Mover.” In a cosmos constantly in motion, where one object causes another object to move and so on, the Prime Mover is the ultimate cause of cosmic motion. It moves others yet is unmoved (if it could be changed, it would not be the “primary” object). It is the ultimate cause and source of all motion that came before us and will continue long after us.

Avicenna (d. 1037) develops Aristotle’s Prime Mover into the “Agent of Cause,” aligning Aristotelean metaphysics with Islamic theology. In Avicenna’s work, the Agent of Cause creates and sustains the cosmos but is Himself uncreated and unchangeable. In short, the Agent of Cause is God. And Avicenna claims that all cosmic motion can be traced back to God the Creator. However, as with St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument, the Cosmological Argument is not without its detractors. Critics point out the problem of infinite regress — if everything must have a cause, then God must also have a cause, which must also have a cause, etc. In response, some philosophers like David Hume (d. 1776) posit that the cosmos is simply a ‘brute fact’ of reality without recourse to further explanation. Some things simply are.

Additionally, in the last hundred years, quantum mechanics has introduced ideas that challenge our traditional notions of causation. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (1927) reveals that while we can easily measure the position and speed of large objects (like an airplane), measuring these properties in tiny, subatomic particles (like photons) becomes problematic because the mere act of measuring them disturbs their movement, making their future path unpredictable. As a result, we can’t simultaneously know a subatomic particle’s position and speed. This implies that subatomic particles don’t have definite properties until we measure them — suggesting that causality doesn’t work the way we intuitively think does.

Religious Rationalism | Maimonides

By the end of the 12th century, the hegemony of the Medieval Church was in serious question. Thinkers like Marsilius of Padua (d. 1342), Jean Buridan (d. 1363), and William of Ockham (d. 1347) posed sharp criticisms against the Scholastics’ grip on philosophy. Padua argued for the separation of church and state. Buridan offered theories on motion and force that disproved prominent Scholastic efforts. And William of Ockham (cf. Sec 2.6) appealed to elegant simplicity over the impenetrable sophistry of earlier Medieval scholars.

Inspired in part by Al-Farabi and Avicenna, the great rabbi and philosopher Maimonides (d. 1204) aimed to show the coherence of philosophy with religion from a Jewish perspective. His Mishneh Torah (1180) is the most significant Jewish commentary of the Bible. In this work, Maimonides integrates millennia of Jewish talmudic tradition with philosophical reasoning. He argued that reason and religion are complementary ways of understanding the world, and where our interpretation of the Bible and our rational observation of the world do not align, our interpretation of scripture must be amended. In this way, Maimonides aimed for a rational observance of Biblical commandments, founded on the claim that reason was a gift from God.

That being said, Maimonides went further than St. Aquinas by claiming that God’s nature is beyond human comprehension (ie. beyond Scholastic reasoning). In his Guide for the Perplexed (1190), Maimonides promotes an apophatic or negative theological outlook, wherein one respectfully refrains from describing what God is (which limits God) and speaks only about what God is not. In apophatic theology, one does not say, “God’s thinking is perfect.” Instead, one states, “God is without error.” Apophatic theologians point out that positive statements about God (eg. God loves, God thinks, God feels) anthropomorphize and therefore reduce God. Passages like Psalm 145 (”His greatness is unsearchable”), Psalm 147 (”His understanding is beyond measure”), and Job 38 (”Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”) point to the incomprehensibility of God. If God did not reveal His face to Moses (cf. Exodus 33:20), why would God reveal it to the philosophers?

For Maimonides and a great many modern thinkers to come, the truth was not found in theological certainty but in carefully laid questions that respect the complexity of reality and the limits of human understanding.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains the controversial Maimonides

3.2 | The Birth of Modernity

The Renaissance

Between the 14th and 16th centuries, profound historical changes occurred throughout Europe that culminated in what we today call the modern age. In a period of relative political stability, Italian city-states developed culturally through a patronage system wherein artists, architects, and intellectuals vied for sponsorships from wealthy élites. This culminated in a cultural rebirth (Fr. Renaissance) of Southern Europe. Writers like Dante (d. 1321) and artists like da Vinci (d. 1519) made Italy the cultural center of the Western world. Humanists like Petrarch (d. 1374) and Erasmus (d. 1536) took another look at long-forgotten Greco-Roman ancient texts — not just philosophy but the literature and theater of antiquity — marveled at our past achievements and dared to wonder what humanity might be capable of in a world where we were free to read, believe, and think according to our own personal convictions. And with the invention of the printing press (1440), all of Western Europe would soon be part of this rebirth.

The Beginning of Modernity

Everything about the European worldview changed in those two hundred years. In the classical past, time was viewed as a big circle. Nothing ever changes. You had the job your father had, and his father, and his father, etc. But in the modern world, there was a new word — progress. The modern perspective was one of optimism and continuous improvement. People began to think about technology (eg. the printing press) as a transformative force in our lives.

Back in the classical past, reality was explained through metaphor, narrative, and allegory. As we saw with the Scholastics, philosophical inquiry occurred under the watchful eye of the Medieval Church — whose priesthood generally described the world as a long-recognized story to their illiterate parishioners.* But in the modern world, there was a new word — discovery. There would be a seismic epistemological shift toward precision, observation, and objective proof that would eventually culminate in the Scientific Revolution under Copernicus (d. 1543), Brahe (d. 1601), and Kepler (d. 1630).

And in the classical past, authority had been invested in holy authority figures. If someone had a question, they were expected (often under the threat of violence) to ask a church leader. And bear in mind that there was only one Church at the time, the Medieval Catholic Church, who had a monopoly on questions and answers in Christian Europe. But in the modern world, there was a new focus on the individual to decide for himself what he thought, believed, and voted.

Martin Luther burned the papal bull condemning his teaching and ignited the Protestant Reformation in 1520. Democracy returned to Europe in the Netherlands in 1581. And by 1648, a new world order of nations recreated modern Europe, wherein the people, not the king, were sovereign. In the classical past, it had been a king’s prerogative to maintain stability and order among his subjects. But in this new modern age, there was a new word — freedom.

This is the world in which Cartesian Rationalism developed.

From Scholasticism to Rationalism

Scholasticism was the dominant philosophical view of Europe for nearly 400 years (1100s-1400s). However, with the advent of modernity, the new Humanist and Rationalist philosophers had grown weary of its many issues. First, Scholasticism relies heavily of Church authority to make its claims. But the early modern philosophers felt that truth should be derived from reason and individual understanding. Secondly, scholasticism tends to be excessively complicated and byzantine, lacking in direct observation and scientific parsimony (which as we know, precipitated Ockham’s Razor in Sec. 2.6). As we’ll find in the next section, the Rationalists will instead favor clear and distinct ideas that are self-evident and logically deduced — rather than speculative claims wrapped in ecclesiastical language (cf. Sec. 3.3). Scholasticism was also overly reliant on Aristotle, who more than 1,500 years ago had promoted a view of the cosmos as an organic whole, made of “substances” and “forms” that now proved inadequate to explaining empirical scientific research. Rather, the Scientific Revolution would produce a mechanistic view of the cosmos, emphasizing physical processes and emergent properties rather than essences or teleological purposes.

Rationalism is the epistemological view that reason (not observation or religious faith) is the primary source of knowledge. Leery of the mistakes common to the senses, the Rationalists argued that purely logical reasoning could enable us to arrive at truths independent of empirical observation. While the eyes and ears can often deceive us, the human mind’s ability to attain to reason is without equal. Most Rationalists based this claim in the old Platonic notion of innate ideas — the view that the human mind comes preloaded with certain fundamental truths (eg. logic, simple math, a notion of the self/consciousness). In these ways, the rise of the Rationalists marked the final exit of the Scholastics.

René Descartes (d. 1650) would be the world’s first Rationalist scholar.

3.3 | Leaving the Cave • Plato

Self-Evident Truth | Descartes

Descartes argued that Scholastic methodology had led Europe into intellectual stagnation, as it did not encourage questioning established ideas or developing new theories. Again, this stagnation has a lot to do with the Medieval over-reliance on authority and failure to promote skeptical inquiry. From Emperor Justinian’s closing of Plato’s Academy in 529 until Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641, most of Europe had been mired in a thousand-year-long Dark Age of ignorance, dogmatic obedience, and magical thinking.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Medieval Church had become the guardians of European society. The priesthood represented the literate class, who shepherded the illiterate masses in a highly stratified world. Most Europeans were landless peasants who worked land they did not own. Schooling the peasant children who worked their fields was not a priority for the landowning gentry. Besides, before the printing press (1440), books were all written by hand and therefore prohibitively expensive. Most Christian Europeans only ever saw one book in their lives — a bible, chained to the church pulpit, written in Latin (a language no one but priests spoke or understood).

By maintaining a monopoly on literacy, the Medieval Church restricted the ability of everyday Europeans from questioning the social order and ecclesiastical hegemony of the Church. At its most noble, the choice to keep literacy and critical thinking away from regular Europeans was due to a lack of educational infrastructure and the prohibitive cost of handwritten books. At its most cynical, it was a strategic way for the Church to maintain its unquestioned social, political, and economic hold over Europe. In either case, Europeans had largely forgotten how to question by Descartes’ time.

For a thousand years, the Medieval Church’s favorite question was “What is truth?” Pontius Pilate famously posed this question to Jesus at his trial (John 18:38), and was always answered the same way — the truth is whatever the Church says it is. In this way, philosophy stagnated at the height of the Medieval Church’s authority. The central issue for the Scholastic priesthood was whether a parishioner was following Church dogma and ecclesiastical law. To question the ‘truths’ of the Medieval Church was tantamount to questioning the authority of the Church. Ergo, the Dark Ages.

But with the rebirth of Europe (ie. Renaissance), the old order began to fall away. Modernity was bringing new ideas into the conversation — like progress, discovery, and the individual. This brought about new ideas and new ways of thinking. It was René Descartes who finally set Europe on a course away from ecclesiastical authority and toward a new world of modern philosophy. He did this by reframing an age-old question. Instead of asking, “What is truth?” which would invariably arc back to the Church’s well-worn talking points, he asked, “Of what can we be certain?”

This is a fundamentally different question and the first question of the modern age.

When we ask questions to which those in power already have answers, progress becomes impossible. We’re just shoveling coal into the firebox of a locomotive whose tracks were laid long ago and whose train will never see a different station. Descartes recognized this and circumvented the limitations of Scholastic inquiry by asking a new, fundamental question of epistemology. “Of what can we be certain” invites us to rethink how we arrive at certainty. What are our methods for deducing certainty? And what do the preconditions of certainty look like?

The longer Descartes stared at this question, the clearer the utility of a once-forbidden concept became. Whatever this new world of philosophy had in store, doubt would be the key to unlocking modernity’s hidden treasures.

Descartes' Method of Doubt

Ironically, Descartes used the concept of doubt to discover undoubtable knowledge. In his search for philosophical certainty, doubt would lead the way! His zeal for Rationalism reminds one of the first generation of philosophers, the Presocratics, who eschewed Greek ad hoc stories and mythical narratives for logic and reason.

Descartes sought an epistemological foundation for that which could not be doubted. So he started by setting aside everything that he could possibly doubt. Today, we would call Descartes’ adventure one of skepticism or skeptical inquiry. First, Descartes doubted the reliability of the senses. He observed that our senses can be deceived — as in optical illusions or the ambiguity of hearing speech. Since our sensory perceptions are often limited and prone to error, Descartes concluded that they could not be a solid foundation for certainty.

Second, Descartes doubted the reality of the physical world. He considered the possibility that we might be living in a dream world. If he had access to artificial intelligence as we have today, He may have also considered the similar possibility that we live inside an artificial simulation. After all, what proof is there that we are nothing more than a simulation fed by electrodes into a brain in a vat that only thinks it’s seeing and hearing the real world?

Next, Descartes doubted the truth of mathematical knowledge. Perhaps an evil spirit has convinced us that 2+2=4, but actually 2+2=5? Seems implausible, but Descartes wanted to find something for which he could not possibly doubt. And then he found it. Descartes may doubt sensory perception. Descartes may doubt the physical world. Descartes may even doubt mathematical principles. But in all of this, what can he never doubt? He cannot doubt that he is doubting.

Thus, Descartes arrives at a conclusion not built on tradition, priestly teaching, or ad hoc narrative. Descartes cannot doubt that he is doubting. Rationalism thus proves that Descartes exists. Or, as the famous axiom states — Cogito Ergo Sum. “I think, therefore I am.”

Self-Evident Truths

Descartes realizes that his thinking about his own existence is undeniable. The Cogito (”I think, therefore I am”) is the “undoubtable knowledge” he was looking for. What’s more — and this is key — no one, no priest, no Scholastic monk, no landowning baron could logically argue otherwise. Descartes’ existence was an undeniable truth.

Descartes thought harder about this undeniable truth and discovered two attributes to this axiom. First, it is clear. By clear, he means that the cogito is vivid, simple, and unmistakable. The awareness of one’s own thinking about their existence is immediately evident to the thinker. There is no possible confusion about what it means. Secondly, it is distinct. That is, the cogito is separate from all other ideas. It contains within itself the essential properties that make it true. It is not a matter of tradition, faith, privilege, or cultural narrative. It is simply and undeniably true.

Descartes then looks at these two attributes — a clear and distinct philosophical claim — and comes to a paradigm-shifting conclusion. A clear and distinct claim is a self-evident claim. What does he mean by this? Descartes says that all clear and distinct philosophical claims are unmistakably self-evident. That is, such ideas need no external evidence or further proof.

The eventual arrival of “self-evident truths” breaks the world.

Why? Because if a truth is self-evident, it cannot be argued by anyone — not a king, not a priest, not a firing squad. Anyone who argues against a self-evident truth is simply and always flat wrong. Before Descartes, truth was what the Church dictated in the West. After Descartes, truth could be self-evident — and therefore available to everyone.

So when a group of freedom-loving English colonists needed to make a philosophical argument against their former monarch, they used Descartes. When Thomas Jefferson pens the Declaration of Independence, he bases our argument for natural rights in Cartesian Rationalism.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (1776)

3.4 | Empirical Thinking | Locke

French Rationalism vs English Empiricism

With “Cogito Ergo Sum “ (I think, therefore I am), René Descartes (d. 1650) creates the first modern epistemological view — Rationalism. Drawing on the Scholastic emphasis on deductive reasoning (ie. particular inference from a general law), Descartes lifts reason up as the preeminent source of knowledge. For Descartes, truths like the nature of reality could be known without sensory experience. This means Descartes subscribes to the notion that we are capable of a priori knowledge. A priori knowledge is knowledge independent of (or ‘prior to’) sensory experience. It is knowledge that can be deduced through reason alone. No empirical evidence needed.

However, across the English Channel, John Locke (d. 1704) was building on a competing epistemological view initiated by the English Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon (d. 1626). A physician and educator by training, John Locke’s worldview was entirely invested in empirical evidence. Like Descartes, Locke was weary of the dogmatic thinking of the Scholastics. In fact, Locke’s formative years saw the Catholic/Protestant English Civil War (1642-51) wreak havoc on the English people — all in the name of religious zealotry. So Locke was uniquely sensitive to the dangers of speculative thinking and the necessity of empirical evidence.

Locke’s empiricism posits the competing epistemological view that measurable observation (not mere reason alone) is the primary source of knowledge. He sharply critiqued his French counterpart by pointing out that basing one’s conclusions about reality on reason alone could lead to unsupportable claims. A claim may seem reasonable, but if it doesn’t match up with our careful observations, it is false. For example, one’s intuitive reasoning may lead us to claim that the sun revolves around the Earth. But, attentive empirical observation shows this to be false. The changing seasons are the result of Earth’s tilted yearly orbit. The positions of stars regularly shift (ie. stellar parallax) as Earth’s position changes throughout that year. And telescopes show Venus waxing and waning in phases like the moon. None of this would happen if the sun revolved around the Earth, but all of this has been empirically measured as our Earth revolves around the sun.

Rather than be limited to reason alone, Locke claimed that empiricism was the key to knowledge. That is, truth is a posteriori — grounded in observation and experience that can then be reasonably considered and discussed. Moreover, Locke claims all ideas originate in either “sensation” (ie. experience via one’s senses) or “reflection” (ie. thinking about one’s sensory experiences). For Locke, the substrate upon which these reflections dance is the ‘blank slate’ of the mind.

Lockean Empiricism: Tabula Rasa

Locke’s empiricism is rooted in the view that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa (or ‘blank slate’) upon which experience is written. For Locke, the direct data of our senses (eg. touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, etc.) is our most reliable source of knowledge. He insisted that all ideas originate from our sensory experiences or upon reflection of those experiences. This flies in the face of every philosopher from Plato to Descartes, who had argued for innate ideas — the epistemological view that we are born with knowledge. But innate ideas are problematic. First, we seldom find universal agreement in our ideas. Global cultures have profound differences in socialization, education, and life experiences that lead to vastly different ways of thinking. Secondly, Locke points out that the premise that people have knowledge of which they are not yet aware is not meaningfully different than the claim that such people are simply without knowledge. Third, how is this innate knowledge supposed to work? Did George Washington have an innate knowledge of smartphones but just never got around to using it? Do we have innate knowledge of places not yet on our maps? Of deeds by people not yet born? Do you see how much simpler (cf. Ockham’s Razor) it is to posit that the theory of innate ideas is not the most useful way of describing the human mind?

Moreover, Locke was invested in the pedagogical value of tabulae rasae for his students. Why? Because if a student’s learning is dependent on innate ideas, then learning is almost entirely dependent on the knowledge the child was born with. As you can imagine, such a view could be used to disenfranchise those who historically did not have access to education. However, if students are born with a mind resembling a ‘blank slate,’ then what learning takes place has little to do with the student and a great deal to do with the quality of that student’s education. John Locke wanted to see his students aim for a better life through education. His ‘tabula rasa’ theory certainly promotes that.

Empiricism Going Forward

By Locke’s time, empiricism had already been used to great effect for over a century in Italy. Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) was the first to challenge the Medieval Church’s geocentric (earth-centered) model of the solar system by use of reason and mathematical data. And in 1609, Galileo Galilei’s (d. 1642) use of new telescope technology empirically proved Copernicus’ heliocentric (sun-centered) model.

A decade after Galileo, Francis Bacon (d. 1621) publishes his “Novum Organum” (New Instrument), in which he laid out an inductive method (ie. general inference from a specific observation) for observing natural phenomena. His method focused on induction, observation, and experimental proof. Today, we call this the Scientific Method. Long championed in the Islamicate world to the south (cf. Alhazen, d. 1040), Europe’s road to empiricism began with Galileo’s telescope, was put together in Bacon’s notes, and would come to full flower in John Locke’s seminal Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690. It was Locke’s philosophical treatise that proved the logical reasonableness of the scientific method. That is to say, modern science proves its data empirically — while philosophy explains the validity of its methods by providing the axioms upon which empiricism works (more on the relationship between science and philosophy will be discussed in Secs. 3.5 and 3.6).

While Locke made friends in the early scientific community, he also had his detractors. Locke faced significant criticism from German polymath Gottfried Leibniz (d. 1716), who argued we are born with some natural inclinations and moral principles that shape our thinking. This contrasts sharply with Locke’s ‘experience alone’ view. However, modern psychology has largely sided with Leibniz. It turns out we do have some innate cognitive structures and predispositions that play a significant role in shaping our thinking and behavior (cf. Sec. 4.1).

After Locke, the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley (d. 1753) advanced empiricism in an even more radical direction. Berkeley challenged the notion of an objective reality altogether, arguing that existence depends on being perceived by a mind. His famous maxim, “To be is to be perceived,” suggests that material objects do not exist independently of our perception of them. For Berkeley, the only realities are minds and their ideas — there is no external world beyond our perception.

While no one today is a strict Lockean or Berkeleyan Empiricist, both of these thinkers will be drawn together later by Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), who will argue that while knowledge begins with experience, it is not entirely derived from it. (cf. Sec. 4.1).

3.5 | Science & Falsifiability • Popper

After the Scientific Revolution

After Bacon and Locke, the field of “Natural Philosophy” takes flight across Europe. The Chemical Revolution begins with Robert Boyle’s (d. 1691) pushback against the old “earth, air, fire, and water” elements (cf. Empedocles, Sec. 1.3) in favor of the advancements made with atoms and chemical reactions. This is the moment that medieval alchemy is replaced with modern chemistry. A century later, Antoine Lavoisier (d. 1794) formulates the Law of Conservation of Mass. Here, Lavoisier disproves the previously held phlogiston theory by proving that, when burned in a closed environment, there is no loss of mass during a chemical reaction.

In physics, Sir Isaac Newton (d. 1727) revolutionizes our understanding of motion and gravity (cf. Principia Mathematica, 1687) by providing a paradigm for physics that stands the test of time for centuries. And in biology, William Harvey (d. 1657) develops the first accurate circulatory system model, disproving the theory that the liver produces blood to cool the body (cf. Galen, d. 216). Over the next two hundred years, a consensus of philosophers and scholars come together to promote Natural Philosophy by debating, testing, and disseminating the new empirical findings that built the modern world.

Science vs Pseudoscience | Popper

Self-styled “naturalists” like Isaac Newton made such tremendous gains in the subfields of natural philosophy that the terms “naturalist” and “natural philosopher” ultimately become useless. What did an 18th-century natural philosopher who studied physical motion have in common with a natural philosopher who studied owls, the weather, or malaria? Their philosophical underpinnings were identical, but their subjects were entirely unique to one another. Through rigorous observation and experimentation, the work of the naturalists had become a techné (cf. Sec. 1.4), a set of techniques and technological endeavors altogether new.

So, a century after Newton, the British Association for the Advancement of Science agreed in 1833 to refer to anyone dedicated to the empirical study of the natural world as a “scientist.” While “science” is derived from the Latin for knowledge, it is an anachronistic error to refer to anyone working before 1833 as a “scientist” (this section does so heuristically). Long after the adoption of the term “science,” many scholars (including Charles Darwin) continued to refer to themselves as “natural philosophers.” But by the early 1900s, the term “scientist” had been fully adopted. After 1833, the specializations in various scientific fields explode in every possible direction.

• 1841: Paleontology (dinosaurs discovered)
• 1846: Astronomy (Neptune discovered)
• 1854: Meteorology (1st national weather service)
• 1859: Biology (“On the Origin of Species”)
• 1862: Geology (Earth is “millions” of years old)
• 1869: Chemistry (Periodic Table of Elements)
• 1900: Medicine (antibiotics discovered)
• 1915: Physics (Einstein posits General Relativity)

Clearly, no single “naturalist” could study all these new fields with equal rigor.
Thus, the specialization of the sciences.

So, as the scientists and the rest of philosophy began to work in different buildings on campus, some philosophers (including this author) continued to investigate the philosophical underpinnings of science. In the 20th century, labeling something a “science” became an expeditious way to give validation to a concept. But could *anything* be called a science? Would that not undermine the entire scientific project? This tension came to the attention of the Austro-British philosopher Karl Popper (d. 1994). Popper wanted to differentiate “science” from what he called “pseudoscience.”

Karl Popper considered Albert Einstein’s 1915 Theory of General Relativity the hallmark of science done right. Like Francis Bacon 300 years prior, Einstein’s methodology involved inductive reasoning, observation, and experimental proof. But it was the “proof” part in which Popper took the greatest interest. This is because Einstein’s 1915 theory made a risky prediction that was ultimately proven during the 1919 solar eclipse. In sum, the Theory of General Relativity postulates that starlight will bend when passing the sun due to gravity. Observations made during the eclipse proved it did.

But here’s the thing — the 1919 solar eclipse could’ve disproven Einstein just as easily! With General Relativity, Einstein had made a falsifiable claim. Falsifiability is the philosophical axiom that a scientific theory must make predictions that can be potentially proven false through empirical observation. If evidence cannot potentially disprove a theory, it is unfalsifiable and thus an unscientific claim.

Here, we see that the Theory of General Relativity is good science because there are empirical tests that can clearly disprove the theory. On the other hand, something like astrology is considered a pseudoscience as its predictions are so vague and ambiguous as to be impossible to falsify. For the scientific community, the epistemic difference between Einstein’s theories and astrology comes down to whether or not there is an empirical test to disprove its predictions unequivocally.

For science, pursuing knowledge is not about confirming our views (eg. “This is why our theory is true!”). No. The scientific pursuit of knowledge improves our understanding of the world by constantly attempting to disprove our views (eg. “Here is an empirical test that could disprove our claims!”). Without falsifiability, it simply isn’t science. (See Sec. 3.6 for more on defining science).

Paradigm Shifts in Science | Kuhn

As we think on the history of science, some questions arise. What about the old theories that have now been replaced by new theories? Doesn’t that somehow invalidate our theories now? Because won’t there be even better science in the future? Doesn’t that put to question the “truth” of science?

Well, according to Karl Popper, science is not “true” or “false” in the way we intuitively think of these terms. Rather, science represents provisional information about the world that — yes — in light of new evidence, our ideas about science necessarily change. That is to say the theory of gravity is provisionally accurate, until we come up with a better way to describe the fundamental forces of reality.

In this way, science goes through what American philosopher Thomas Kuhn (d. 1996) calls paradigm shifts. Herein, scientists work within an existing framework of scientific theories that guide their research called a paradigm. For example, in the Medieval period, alchemists worked within the paradigm of “alchemy” in order to turn base metals into gold. We know today that this isn’t possible. But a thousand years ago, this was thought a wise and laudable endeavor. So was alchemy false? Actually, this isn’t a useful category for our consideration. Because alchemy produced tin foil, gold plating, hydrochloric acid, thermometers, poisons, explosives, and whiskey. The distillation process alone gives us reason to thank the alchemists. So, why don’t we teach alchemy in colleges today? Simple: we outgrew it’s usefulness.

Working under the paradigm of “alchemy,” we hit a crisis — the experiments were producing more and more unexpected results. At first, these anomalies were ignored or hand–waved away. But eventually a new scientific paradigm results that is robust enough that it can not only answer all those pesky anomalies but can make predictions that are not disproven for a very long time. Alchemy was eventually replaced by the far more useful paradigm of chemistry. Germ theory replaced putrid air theory for the same reasons. And natural selection replaced Platonic typology. And so forth...

Science is not made of simple “true” or “false” claims. Rather, science makes provisionally true claims until a more useful paradigm comes along that replaces the old paradigm. So, one does not ‘believe in science.’ Science is always evolving. Instead, one accedes to the preponderance of evidence for a scientific claim until that claim is disproved empirically, giving way to a new paradigm shift in scientific thinking and methodology.

3.6 | Philosophy & Science • Hawking

Why Science Can't Overtake Philosophy

By the 1920s, a century after the sciences were so named, a circle of Viennese philosophers and scientists began to promote a view called Logical Positivism. This view asserted that the only meaningful philosophical statements are those verifiable through empirical proof. Note that while empiricism is a broad view of epistemology that states metaphysical claims must be grounded in sensory experience, positivism is a much more narrow view of epistemology that rejects all metaphysical discussion entirely and is committed only to quantifiable claims. As such, the Logical Positivists aimed to apply scientific methods onto philosophy. They imagined a world where wisdom was replaced with modern techné (cf. Sec. 1.4).

The view that the only true statements are those which are empirically verifiable is called the verification principle. With scientific verification, the Logical Positivists hoped to release late modern philosophy of meaningless metaphysical speculation. But it didn’t work. First, as Thomas Kuhn (d. 1996) points out, science is not a linear, logical, cumulative path toward “truth.” Instead, science advances in messy cultural waves called paradigm shifts — influenced by social and historical factors as much as empirical research. The Copernican paradigm shift in astronomy — from thinking the sun revolves around the earth to astronomers proving the earth revolves around the sun — was deeply tied to a struggle between the ecclesiastical power of the Medieval Church and the freedom of astronomers to pursue their research unhindered. Scientists, too, get stuck in their thinking. Many scientists balked at the early 20th-century paradigm shift from Newtonian to quantum mechanics because it requires a shift from a purely deterministic worldview to a probabilistic worldview, which physicists like Einstein (d. 1955) initially dismissed for cultural and philosophical reasons. And though presented in 1912, the view that continents drift along the globe was largely rejected by geologists who were culturally entrenched in a fixed-continent paradigm that would not be shaken until the 1960s.

There were other criticisms of the view that science leads us on a ‘march toward truth.’ While philosophy does indeed seek wisdom and truth, this is not the role of science. Instead, as Karl Popper (d. 1994) points out, science does not progress by being proven true but by proving lesser theories as false. Again, looking at Sec. 3.5, the thinking that science is “true” is wrongheaded. Science is provisionally true where the preponderance of evidence lies. But, at best, science can only tell us what is not the case. Science can never be fully verified, as a future experiment could dislodge that certainty.

Finally, the verification principle itself suffers from a self-refuting paradox. It simply doesn’t work. Why? Because the verification principle claims that the only true statements are those which are empirically verifiable. So, if that’s the case, is the verification principle itself empirically verifiable? No? Then it fails its own standard for “true” statements.

Model-Dependent Realism | Hawking

Working from Kuhn and Popper, the famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking (d. 2018) asserts in The Grand Design (2010) that science is not tasked with uncovering “ultimate truth” but with building useful models that explain our observations and predict future phenomena. This claim comes from Hawking’s epistemic position — “Model-Dependent Realism.” That is, while no single theory can unlock all of reality for us, different models and paradigms can provide useful and scientifically valid interpretations of the world depending on the context in which they are applied.

For Hawking, the job of science is to construct models that are:

• Elegant: as seen in concise, powerful equations like Einstein’s E = mc²

• Non-arbitrary: they should rely on minimal adjustable parameters

• Comprehensive: capable of explaining all known data up to this point

• Predictive: offering testable, falsifiable predictions about future observations

• Not Pseudoscience: can be disproven when precise predictions don’t occur​

Einstein’s 1915 Theory of General Relativity (cf. Sec. 3.5) exemplifies a well-constructed scientific model of reality. First, it’s elegant. It shows how mass and energy affect the curvature of spacetime, which in turn determines the motion of objects. It has only one adjustable parameter (the cosmological constant), which reflects the dynamic, accelerating expansion of the cosmos. It is comprehensive, explaining a range of phenomena from GPS to the way light travels around massive objects. It is predictive, confirmed in the 1919 solar eclipse (cf. Sec. 3.5). And it is falsifiable (ie. not pseudoscience). As late as 2015, the century-old theory was again confirmed when the LIGO experiment successfully used it to detect gravitational waves.

Einstein does not claim to possess ultimate truth. His Theory of General Relativity is not the “true” view of the cosmos. However, it is a highly successful, provisionally accurate, elegant model for predicting gravitational phenomena.

The Limits of Science

As Popper, Kuhn, and Professor Hawking point out, science relies on a philosophical foundation to make its claims. Model-dependent realism shows us that models shape our scientific understanding of reality. Without recourse to logic, axioms, and certain epistemic convictions like empiricism, science cannot do its job.

Further, we have no direct access to ultimate truth in a science lab. Much as they would’ve liked it to, Logical Positivism didn’t outwit or eliminate the need for philosophy. Ask any scientist to prove the validity of the scientific method using only the scientific method (with no recourse to epistemology or metaphysics). It can’t be done. Though large it may loom, science never left its roots as “natural philosophy.” It cannot dictate truth to other branches of philosophy built upon different axioms. That is, science cannot tell us how we should act (moral philosophy), how we should govern (political philosophy), or what is beautiful (philosophy of aesthetics). As an outgrowth of empiricism, science is limited to answering questions that can be verified empirically. It cannot give us value, beliefs, morals, or meaning. What science can give us is hard data and increasingly useful models of our world. For this endeavor, it deserves to be well-funded, protected, and advocated for by every reasoning person.

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This Section: Scientific Thinking
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The Death of Socrates | Jacques-Louis David, 1787

Key Terms for this Section
Ontology · World of Being · Allegory of the Cave · Scholasticism · Ockham’s Razor

2.1 | The Same River Twice • Heraclitus

The Late Presocratics

The Presocratic philosophers all developed distinct philosophical claims about the nature of reality (ie. Metaphysics). Despite their differences, they shared several commonalities that laid the foundation for Western philosophy. All these thinkers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the world, viewing ad hoc stories as insufficient for seeking the arché and understanding reality. Instead, they sought to explain the world through natural phenomena and emphasized the importance of reason and observation as tools for uncovering the nature of existence.

Thales, the first philosopher, proposed that water is the primary substance from which all things originate. Anaximenes, a student of Thales, suggested that air is the essential element. Both philosophers were interested in identifying a single underlying principle or substance that constituted the cosmos. Later, Democritus proposed that everything is composed of tiny, indivisible particles called atoms. His atomic theory provided a durable, mechanistic explanation of the universe. Eventually, Pythagoras brought mathematical principles into the discussion, arguing that numbers are the fundamental reality. He posited that numerical ratios explain the structure and order of the universe, introducing a more abstract cosmological perspective.

Ultimately, the Presocratics lived around the same time and came to different conclusions. But what they held in common was a rational pursuit of the truth, rejecting ad hoc narratives as explanations, and focusing on metaphysics. After Pythagoras, the late Presocratics (after the Milesian School) would continue to focus on metaphysical questions with greater and greater elucidation.

Change is an Illusion | Parmenides

The Greek philosopher Parmenides came from a Greek town just south of Naples, Italy. Unlike the early Presocratics who focused on primordial elements (eg. water, air, earth, numbers, etc), Parmenides went even deeper — questioning the very nature of being itself. The philosophical investigation of being is Ontology (Gr. ontos meaning “being”). In his search for the arché, Parmenides asked what existed before any origin or beginning. He proposed that before anything existed, there was “nothingness.” Like Pythagoras before him, Parmenides did not shy away from purely abstract thought.

The first Ontologist, Parmenides contends there are three levels of sensibility. At the earliest level, there is nothing. It follows that we cannot say anything about this level as we cannot sense anything about it. Next is the ontological distinction between what is and what is not. The final level — where we see, taste, touch, and feel — is existence. This is what “is.” It was Parmenides’ claim that the fundamental nature of reality is unity — eternal and true. He argues that what we perceive as change and variety in the world is illusory. Being is singular and unchanging.

You Can't Step in the Same River Twice | Heraclitus

Meanwhile, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus came from Ephesus, a Greek town in the Persian Empire (today, Türkiye). Heraclitus elucidated the Greek concept of logos, another key idea in ancient Greek philosophy and, subsequently, Christianity. Logos has no direct English equivalent. In theological circles, it is used untranslated. Logos has connotations of order, reason, and even text. Biology, for example, means the study (logos) of life (bios). The Greeks recognized that the world has a recognizable order to it: the moon waxes and wanes, the tide goes in and out, children grow up, grow old, and die. While they did not understand the mechanisms behind this order, the Greeks referred to this order as the logos. This is more or less where the Greek search for the arché ends up — with Heraclitus’ claim that the logos represents the deep structure of reality (cf. John 1).

For Heraclitus, the logos is the divine ordering principle of the cosmos. It is reason itself, giving structure to our language, thoughts, and the world. Logos is where we get the word logic, and the Romans derived the word lex (law). It is unchanging, perfect, and universal. However, Heraclitus goes further than Parmenides. While both Presocratic philosophers argue for a static, unchanging reality, Heraclitus argues that this does not accurately represent the world in which we exist. Instead, the Eastern Greek philosopher asserts that while you may think you can visit the same river twice, this is impossible.

To understand this, we must delve into Heraclitus’ notion of flux. While regulated by the logos (eternal and rational), the phenomena of our world (eg. trees, people, cities) are in a constant state of change (ie. flux). Trees sprout, grow, and die in a predictable way (cf. logos), but where they drop seeds, when they blossom, and how they eventually fall happen in unpredictable ways (cf. flux). Famously, Heraclitus claimed, “You can’t step in the same river twice.” This is primarily for two reasons. First, when you return to the river, it has changed. The waters have receded, the stones have moved, and even the sunlight may reflect off its surface differently. But you must also consider that when you return to the river, you have also changed! You’re now older, wiser, and perceive things differently than you did when you were last at the river’s edge.

So, for Heraclitus, there are two levels of reality. Above all is the logos — the underlying rational principle governing everything. But in our lived experience, we generally witness a world in flux — where rivers, governments, and planets are constantly in motion. For Heraclitus, both visions of reality are true.

2.2 | Know Thyself • Socrates

The Father of Western Philosophy | Socrates

It is in the teachings of Socrates, a man who famously never wrote anything down, that philosophy takes its current form. Socrates (ca. 470-399 BCE) was born in Athens, the son of a humble stonemason. He was a combat veteran in the Peloponnesian War, a brutal civil conflict incited by the Athenian élite, where his unit faced defeat in three separate battles. Despite the grim outcomes, Socrates displayed valor, notably saving the life of Alcibiades, an aristocratic general. Upon returning to Athens, Socrates began questioning the values and motivations of the élite class that had sent him to war, setting the stage for his philosophical pursuits.

Fresh from battle and salty about a pointless war, Socrates couldn’t care less about the ultimate nature of reality (ie. metaphysics). He was not part of the tutored, pampered élite. Instead, Socrates broke with the Presocratics to focus on more practical questions. In the Athenian marketplace (ie. the agora), Socrates could be found debating friends, enemies, the young, the old, the downtrodden, and the élite alike. Rather than pontificating on elaborate cosmological theories, Socrates engaged in combative dialogue with people who claimed to have wisdom. In various dialogues (written down by his disciples, Plato and Xenophon), Socrates questioned the élite and powerful of his day to reveal contradictions in their thinking and strip away false beliefs. His “teaching” (note: Socrates claimed to know nothing) was available to all in the Athenian agora. He operated under the premise that dialogue, rather than introspection, was the key to wisdom.

Reading his dialogues, we can get a pretty good picture of the kind of man Socrates was. A stout, unattractive, working-class guy and combat veteran, Socrates claimed the goal of our lives should be to flourish (Gr. eudaimonia) through our personal pursuit of excellence (Gr. arête). Much of his dialogues are devoted to the goal of this flourishing by developing virtues like courage, wisdom, and self-control. Contrary to what some modern readers might guess, Socrates was less concerned that someone was smart and more concerned about the state of their soul (Gr. psyche). Socrates promoted the development of young Greeks along physical (gymnastics), mental (academics), and spiritual (the virtues) dimensions. For the great philosopher, evil arises from ignorance. So, educating the youth was Socrates’ way of keeping Athens healthy and prosperous.

Know Thyself

In Socrates’ time, the powerful and prominent visited the storied Oracle at Delphi to seek guidance. Socrates likewise eventually made his way to the oracle. At the front of the temple, the phrase “Know Thyself” (Gr. Gnothi Sauton) was displayed for all who came to receive the oracle’s wisdom. This phrase has been the credo of philosophers ever since.

In the temple, the Pythia shared with Socrates his personal fortune — she told him he was the wisest man on earth!

However, this declaration puzzled Socrates, leading him to spend years pondering its meaning. He eventually concluded that his wisdom lay in his awareness of his own ignorance — unlike others who falsely believed themselves wise. This realization led to Socrates’ famous mantra: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

For Socrates, his laser-sharp focus on self-knowledge left no room for metaphysics and the pontification of Athenian sophists jockeying for audiences and political position. To know oneself is to understand one’s moral worth and values. It means challenging our most basic and cherished assumptions. It means ignoring the external validation of others. Socrates had no care for awards, titles, or elections. He simply wanted to know the truth and serve his beloved Athens.

Without grounding ourselves in self-knowledge, we become too vulnerable to the opinions of others. When the crowd speaks ill, we become defensive. When the crowd offers adulation, we become dependent on their approval. But such attitudes often compromise our autonomy, development, and virtue. In this way, Socrates did not explain philosophy. Socrates showed us how to live as a philosopher.

The Platonic Dialogues

Eventually, Socrates’ antagonistic relationship with the Athenian élite got him arrested. He was charged the same way all thinkers who question the status quo are charged — he was accused of 1) corrupting the youth of Athens and 2) not giving the proper honor to the sacred symbols of the Athenian state and its well-monied priests.

The Apology

Socrates surrounded himself with quite the motley crew — élites, the working poor, slaves, the tutored, untutored, older, younger... But his young student Plato was by far the most intelligent. From Plato’s written Dialogues, we have the clearest picture of Socrates. In Plato’s Apology (meaning “Explanation“ in the original Greek), we find an earnest, direct, sometimes funny Socrates, who seems unconcerned with the formalities of the Athenian court.

To the charge of corrupting the youth — Socrates argues that any harm done had been the result of his own ignorance. He explains that his purpose was to question so-called ‘wise men’ in order to reveal their ignorance and fraud. This approach gained him popularity among the Athenian youth, who were inspired by Socrates to also challenge the authorities. This ultimately led to the resentment and embarrassment of the Athenian elite and Socrates’ arrest.

To the charge of impiety — Socrates argues that he is pious in his divine mission given to him by the Oracle at Delphi: to find wisdom wherever possible and unmask the pretenders who claim to know truth but cannot face scrutiny. The state then responds by pointing out that Socrates neglects the Athenian civic religion and sacred totems of the city. Socrates counters that he has a divine inner voice guiding him along his own personal spiritual path.

A patriot, veteran, and father, Socrates famously defends himself by describing the city-state of Athens as a workhorse and likening himself to a gadfly (ie. horsefly) that stings the lethargic state of Athens, provoking it to move forward and complete her valuable work. Socrates believes that embarrassing politicians, confounding priests, and criticizing the élite is his sacred duty. The élite do not agree and find him guilty on both charges. When asked for a suggested punishment, Socrates humorously proposes a ‘punishment’ of free meals for life for services rendered to Athens.

The judges don’t see the humor and sentence Socrates to death.

The Crito

Plato’s dialogue known as The Crito recounts Socrates’ final days in the Athenian prison. Crito was a disciple of Socrates who attempted to persuade his master to escape with him and live in exile. But Socrates was having none of it.

While imprisoned and awaiting execution, Crito visits Socrates. (By the way, Plato is nowhere to be found — the son of élites, some of whom were responsible for Socrates’ guilty verdict — has skipped town.) Crito, on the other hand, bravely arranges an escape plan and offers Socrates the chance to live on. But it’s just like Socrates to take the whole thing and turn it into a teachable moment.

Crito argues with his 70-year-old master, Socrates, presenting several reasons why Socrates should escape. He argues that Socrates’ friends are willing and able to help him live safely in exile and that escaping would prevent the public perception that his disciples had abandoned him. Additionally, Crito contends that Socrates has a duty to his sons to remain alive and support them. Crito also contends that accepting an unjust punishment would itself be an act of injustice.

Socrates counters Crito’s arguments by emphasizing his commitment to Athenian law and to his own virtue. He believes that breaking the law would be an unjust act, regardless of the unjust circumstances of his sentence. Socrates also argues that moral actions should not be determined by popular opinion (the ad populum fallacy) and stresses that wrongdoing harms the soul. As to his children, Socrates says that he must perform his patriotic duty, and in doing so will serve as a proper example of Athenian virtue to his children. Therefore, Socrates reasons it would be wrong to escape, even if he has been wronged, as breaking the law would betray his principles and damage his soul.

In the end, Socrates is given a cup of poisoned wine (hemlock) to drink. As the poison takes effect, Socrates calmly speaks his last words, asking Crito to offer a sacrificial chicken to the god Asclepius. This request is laced with irony, as Socrates did not usually partake in Athenian sacred rituals. By referencing Asclepius, the god of medicine, Socrates humorously acknowledges the hemlock as a kind of “medicine” that frees him from life. His final words reflect his unwavering commitment to virtue and his subtle critique of the accusations against him.

2.3 | Leaving the Cave • Plato

The Allegory of the Cave | Plato

After Socrates’ death, philosophy is forever changed. Absent from Socrates’ side at his execution, Plato (427-348 BCE) later takes his family’s riches and buys an orchard. There, he develops the first Academy. It is a school open to all classes of people (even the sons of Athenian stonemasons). Plato’s Academy becomes the model for Western education and is the source of our word “academic” today. Plato himself becomes the guarantor of Socratic philosophy in Greece and beyond.

To this end, Plato writes his famous Allegory of the Cave. This text is a philosophical metaphor for Plato’s epistemology and his adulation of Socrates. In the Allegory, Plato describes prisoners who have been chained inside a dark cave for their entire lives. These prisoners are confined so that they can only see the wall directly in front of them. Above and behind them is a bright flame, and between the flame and the prisoners, there are élites who cast shadows from the firelight onto the cave wall (basically, like a projector in a movie theater). Having never seen anything else, the prisoners imagine these shadows as the only reality.

One prisoner is freed and slowly and painfully makes his way out of the cave to the outside world above. Initially, the sun’s light is blinding, and the freed prisoner struggles to understand this new reality. As his eyes adjust, he sees the true world, realizing that the shadows on the cave wall were mere illusions — placed there by the cynical élite. However, when the freed prisoner returns to the cave to free the others, he is met with laughter, disbelief, and violence. The cave dwellers are resistant to accepting a reality beyond their own limited experience and kill the enlightened man.

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we see the acquisition of knowledge involves discomfort and resistance (amirite?). It highlights that true knowledge reveals a reality beyond the superficial appearances perceived by the uninitiated. Philosophers who seek to share deeper truths frequently face opposition and punishment from those who are comfortable in their limited understanding and do not wish to change the status quo.

The Theory of Forms | Plato

Working from his Allegory of the Cave, Plato returns the focus to metaphysics and posits two sides to reality — our material world subject to change and decay and an eternal world that is perfect and never changes. These are two sides of the same coin. The top side is known as the World of Being. The bottom side is the World of Becoming.

The World of Becoming is our changeable, material, temporal world. Things grow, have substance, and come to an end. It is apprehensible via the senses — when we see the tree, the rock, or the river, we’re seeing the World of Becoming.

The World of Being is Plato’s perfect reality that sits above our sensible reality — unchanging, ideal, and eternal. In the perfect World of Being, rather than things, there are perfect forms that represent the essences of things down below. The World of Being has perfect beauty, justice, reason, etc. While the World of Becoming is apprehensible via the senses, the World of Being is only apprehensible via reason.

Returning to the Allegory of the Cave, the physical world (cf. the shadows on the cave wall) is an imperfect reflection of the ideal forms above (cf. the world beyond the cave). The beauty, justice, and reason we see in our world are but poor copies of their ideal forms found above.

Here, Plato works from both Parmenides and Heraclitus. Remember that Parmenides argued that reality is ultimately an unchanging, singular unity. However, Plato describes the existence of multiple, perfect forms that give shape to our temporal reality. All our trees have something in common with the ideal tree above. All courts strive to emulate the ideal justice above. So, while Parmenides’ cosmology focuses on one unity, Plato offers a multiplicity of forms from an eternal reality. From Heraclitus, we get the concept of logos as the rational principle of order in an ever-changing physical world. For Heraclitus, the logos and the flux of change are both part of our world. But for Plato, his World of Being is the truer, more perfect, and more complete version of a reality that we only see a shadow of.

Simply put, Parmenides wants us to recognize the unity of all things (there is no change). Heraclitus wants us to recognize that order (logos) and change (flux) are co-equal parts of our world (you can’t step into the same river twice). And Plato wants us to recognize that our world, where things rot and die, is but a shadow of a perfect, eternal world above us (the theory of forms).

The Allegory of the Chariot | Plato

In later years, Plato took his early metaphysics and applied it to describing the soul (Gr. psyche). In this way, Plato’s metaphysics would later shape the religious ideas of the West. Like Thales two centuries before, Plato is a proponent of dualism. Just as there is an eternal World of Being over our temporal World of Becoming, Plato claims an eternal soul transcends our temporal, aging body. But this raises a question for Plato — how does one describe the soul?

Like Socrates, Plato argued that the soul seeks Wisdom, or the Good. But how does the soul seek the Good? Plato likened the soul’s journey to a chariot pulled by two horses. One horse represents our passions. The other horse represents our base appetites. And, to drive the chariot successfully toward Wisdom, both horses need to be steered appropriately.

Too little passion and your ambitions go unrealized. Too much passion, and you’re all over the place. It’s up to the charioteer to tighten or loosen the reins accordingly. The same goes for our appetites — too much, and you become a slave to your physical desires; too little, and you never leave the couch. Again, the charioteer must rein in or indulge the appetites accordingly. So, if one horse is appetite and one is passion, what is the charioteer?

The charioteer is your reason. And remember, reason is the only way to apprehend Wisdom (cf. theory of forms). So, we see Plato once again elegantly allegorizing a philosophical claim about knowledge. Our reason, balancing and fueled by our passions and appetites, charts a path toward Wisdom. This model is known as Plato’s Tripartite Soul.

Later still, Plato would repeat this tripartite model of the ideal soul (flying toward Wisdom) and say it also represented the ideal form of government. In Plato’s Republic, arguably the most important work of Political Philosophy ever written, Plato describes the ideal tripartite body politic.

Plato envisions a government that seeks the flourishing of its citizens (ie. eudaimonia). On one side, he places the workers — who represent the blood and guts of society. On the other side, Plato places the auxiliaries — who represent the heart and passionate defenders of the society. Given free rein, the workers would overconsume and tear the place down. Likewise, without limitations, the auxiliaries would create a police state and turn the Republic into a dystopic nightmare. Instead, Plato envisioned his Republic being led by a wise philosopher-king who could balance society’s appetites and passions so that the city could flourish. Such a king (obviously modeled after Socrates) would possess the highest character, the greatest wisdom, and seek only the Good for his people.

2.4 | The City of God • St. Augustine

Greek Ideas in Israel

Turning to ancient Israel, the Jews who came millennia before Plato talked about God through the language of revelation. Philosophy was a Greek idea. Their primary text, the Torah (ie. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), does not offer any rational arguments for the God with Whom they share a covenant. And why would it? One uses rational argumentation to convince others of their position, and Jewish law prohibits proselytization.

However, a generation after Plato, Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) brings Greek philosophy to Israel. European ideas are then imposed upon the Jewish populace for three centuries by occupying Greeks and Romans. It is in this milieu that Christianity develops. Roman Jews in the first-century Christian movement were steeped in both Greek philosophy and Jewish tradition. The Gospel of John, for example, opens with, “In the beginning was the Logos.” Here, Hereclitus’ cosmological concept becomes a bedrock for Christian theology. In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he nods to Plato, claiming, “These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (2:17).

After Paul and most of the early Christians are killed, the synthesis of Christian teaching and Greek philosophy continued with the early Church Fathers. Justin Martyr (100-165) comprehensively explained Christ as the Greek Logos (cf. John 1). St. Origen (185-253) aligned his understanding of God with Aristotle’s concept of a Prime Mover. And the Cappadocian Fathers (300s) were pivotal in developing the doctrine of the Trinity, using Plato’s tripartite model to describe three persons in one substance.

Neoplatonism | St. Augustine

600 years after Plato’s death, his ideas continued to evolve among his readers. The resulting philosophical school came to be known as Neoplatonism (lit. New Plato). Rooted in Plato’s most challenging dialogue, the Timaeus, was the metaphysical claim that all of existence emanates from an ultimate, perfect source Plato calls “the One.” The “One” is immaterial, eternal, and perfect and came to be how Christians and Muslims described God. Plato’s World of Being further evolved into a transcendent realm where eternal souls aspire to call home called Heaven.

An intemperate man in his youth, the Roman African Augustine (354-430) was horrified by his previous conduct when he converted to Christianity in 386. The latter Saint Augustine came to view the body as a source of sin and wickedness. In Neoplatonism, St. Augustine found Plato’s description of a temporal body and eternal soul agreeable to his theological view. It has since become the preeminent model of the body-soul in Western religion. For St. Augustine, the sinful body is a “cage” for the immaterial soul. While the body seeks carnal pleasures, the soul seeks spiritual union with God through reason and faith.

Further, St. Augustine’s division of body and soul parallels the Catholic reading of the Fall of humanity from the Garden of Eden (cf. Genesis). According to St. Augustine, when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, the resulting Fall removed the human soul from its original state of perfection and union with God (much as Neoplatonism describes the soul’s separation from “the One”). As such, the soul longs to return to its original state of divine union. This yearning mirrors the Neoplatonic idea that souls are always striving to reunite with their perfect source.

Before the Fall, St. Augustine reasons the soul was perfect, ageless, and good. But after the Fall, the body became corrupt, depraved, and desirous of temptation. It is the soul, for St. Augustine, that yearns to return home to the Garden.

The City of God | St. Augustine

By the mid-400s, the Roman Empire was in significant decline. One of the few social structures that held strong was Roman Catholic Christianity. This begged the question: if Rome (or whatever came after its eventual fall) was to be Christian, what does a Christian state look like?

While the Hebrew Bible (ie. Old Testament) has many stories of Jewish kings, royal courts, and warring kingdoms, the New Testament bears little in the way of Political Philosophy. The letters of Paul anticipate a relatively immediate return of Jesus, and the latter Christian texts don’t offer much political instruction for their followers in the meantime. It may not seem like a big deal to us now, but the question of Christian Political Philosophy was vital to the crumbling edifice of the Roman Empire. Enter, St. Augustine.

Again drawing on Neoplatonic ideas, St. Augustine conceived of a Christian Political Philosophy so durable that it became the political blueprint of the entire European Medieval period. His central argument rested on the dichotomy of two empires: the City of God and the City of Man. The eponymous City of God represents a perfect kingdom of justice, peace, and eternal salvation under God’s rule. It bear obvious parallels to Plato’s World of Being — where perfection, truth, and wisdom reside. According to St. Augustine, true justice and peace can only be found in the City of God, which will only be fully realized upon Jesus’ return. Until then, the world remains the City of Man — a temporary, fallible, and sinful earthly existence.

The City of Man represents the fallen state of humanity, marked by sin, pride, and moral decay — qualities St. Augustine saw in the crumbling Roman Empire. Drawing on Neoplatonism, St. Augustine argues that earthly empires are inextricably bound to the material, corruptible World of Becoming. In contrast, the City of God belongs to the eternal World of Being, where the divine nature is unchanging and perfect.

For St. Augustine, Christians are called to live according to the values of the City of God, aligning themselves with the divine will and eternal truths despite residing in the imperfect City of Man. This means prioritizing spiritual virtues and moral integrity over earthly ambitions and transient pleasures, much like Plato’s philosopher-king who rules by knowledge of the Forms. He further asserts that Christians must carefully navigate the tensions between these two cities. While they live in the world and engage with its temporal affairs, their ultimate allegiance should be to God’s eternal kingdom.

2.5 | On Scholastic Faith • St. Aquinas

God & Early Medieval Philosophy

The Christian Neoplatonists developed an intriguing systematic theology — combining Classical Platonism and Medieval Catholic theology. St. Augustine (d. 430) reinterpreted early Neoplatonism into a Christian framework, where God creates the world ex nihilo (from nothing) and is the source of all things (cf. Plato’s Timaeus). In early Platonism, the soul ascends via reason toward Wisdom (cf. Allegory of the Chariot). But in St. Augustine’s work 600 years later, the soul ascends to God through reason and faith. And God, for St. Augustine, is eternal, immaterial, and transcendent — like Plato’s World of Forms.

Following in the footsteps of St. Augustine, Boethius (d. 524) delves deeper into the Neoplatonic/Christian synthesis by exploring the concepts of providence and free will. For Boethius, God’s divine plan (ie. providence) gives order and purpose to our world (cf. Heraclitus’ logos). Boethius’ exploration sheds light on the idea that God orders all events in the world as part of a divine plan that eventually ends with the return of Jesus. At first, the concept of free will might seem contradictory to this (ie. how can there be a plan if billions of humans are making their own choices?). But Boethius deals with this seeming contradiction by pointing to God’s omniscience. That is, while God doesn’t cause or determine events, He already knows the outcomes of our choices and plans accordingly.

Finally, John Scotus (d. 877) further develops the relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity with his views on immanence and transcendence. Scotus uses Neoplatonic ideas to elucidate the nature of God, explaining that while God is close to everything, He remains apart from creation. This philosophical view is called Panentheism — God is everywhere and yet wholly Other.

In sum, much of our modern theological discourse on God’s grace, God’s plan, and God’s presence in everyday events comes directly from early Medieval philosophers integrating Plato, Neoplatonism, and Medieval theology.

Optional Video explaining the importance of Medieval philosophical questions (auto-generated CC).

The Ontological Argument | Anselm

In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm (d. 1109), set out to prove the existence of God using reason alone. St. Anselm begins with the claim that God is the ‘greatest being one can imagine,’ so that nothing greater can be imagined (ie. if something greater could be imagined, then that would be God). So, whenever there are two competing descriptions of God, it follows the greater description must be true. St. Anselm then claims that because existence is greater than absence, God must exist. And if existence in reality is greater than existing in one’s imagination, then God must existence for real. And so on...

This was the earliest purely philosophical argument for the existence of God in the West. It was not without its detractors. Critics point out that St. Anselm is committing a fallacy of reasoning here by “begging the question.” That is, St. Anselm’s argument already assumes God exists before setting out to prove He exists. As Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) would later argue, existence is not a predicate.

Here, a predicate is a quality of something. If “the apple is red,” then red is a predicate of that apple. Kant’s criticism is that St. Anselm’s argument lacks coherence, because saying something “exists” does not add to the concept of an object. If I say “a thousand dollars” and then I say “a thousand dollars exists,” the concept of “$1000” remains the same. I can add to your knowledge of that money by saying, “I have a thousand dollars in wrinkled bills,” or “I have a thousand dollars worth of silver.” But adding the word “exists” to “a thousand dollars” doesn’t add anything meaningful.

As we’ll see in Section 4, Kant will identify such claims as analytic statements, which do not add meaningful information to our discourse (see Sec. 4.1 for more).

Christian Scholasticism | St. Aquinas

Neoplatonism (ca. 200s-600s) had largely fallen out of favor by the time St. Anselm set forth his Ontological Argument. In collaboration with Islamic and Jewish philosophers, late Medieval Christian philosophers shifted their focus away from Plato and toward Aristotle (see Sec. 5 for more on Aristotle). This gave rise to Scholasticism, a late Medieval systematic integration of theology and philosophy that aimed for logical analysis of theological questions through Socratic dialogue. Where Neoplatonism had been primarily focused on integrating Christian metaphysics and theology with Plato, the later Scholastics were more analytic and rigorous in their efforts — aiming to show the absolute, logical soundness of theology. While Neoplatonism is steeped in mysticism, Scholasticism treats faith and reason as separate but complementary truths.

If the most important early Medieval thinker was St. Augustine, the most consequential late Medieval thinker was St. Aquinas. Both men are ‘Doctors of the Church,’ meaning that in matters of the Christian faith, what they had to say is generally considered correct. St. Aquinas’ central claim was that reason is a gift from God given to us to deepen our faith. St. Aquinas worked tirelessly to harmonize the rationality of Classical Greek philosophy with the grandeur of Medieval Christian theology. St. Aquinas’ magnum opus, the Summa Theologica (lit. the sum of all theology), represents the most ambitious philosophical effort of the Middle Ages. The results of St. Aquinas’ efforts were global in scope. Scholasticism became the dominant intellectual tradition of Europe for centuries. Generations of Christian scholars later traveled the world to teach and share the gospel, believing that faith and reason work hand-in-hand.

2.6 | Cut to the Chase • Ockham’s Razor

Medieval Philosophy's End

In the time of Sts. Anselm and Aquinas, philosophers spilled an ocean of ink over questions of forms (eternal properties) and accidents (ie. changeable properties). In questions like, ‘does the form of a tree or redness of an apple exist independently of the physical objects they describe?’ For centuries, questions like this plagued scholars attempting to foist Classical thinking onto an ever more empirically-minded world. Today, we might consider such debates unnecessary. But in the Medieval world, these arguments and positions were the foundation of the Medieval Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical and political power. For example, the question of form vs accident comes into play with the Eucharist. It was the Medieval Catholic Church’s position that their priesthood alone had the ecclesiastical authority to transform bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Here, the body of Christ is the form, while the ‘accidental’ texture and taste of the bread remain the same. When one questioned this theology, one was also questioning the authority of the Medieval Church.

It was William of Ockham (d. 1347) who would be the first to eschew Scholasticism’s unnecessarily complicated claims in favor of a more direct (and more modern) approach to philosophy. Ockham and others like him began to set aside the elaborate metaphysical claims of their predecessors in favor of empirical observation and appeal to natural laws.

Ockham's Razor

William of Ockham was a Medieval English philosopher and theologian best known for an epistemological principle that helped move Europe out of the Medieval period. This principle, called Ockham’s Razor, is generally summarized as, “The simplest explanation is usually the best.” In effect, when we’re presented with multiple, divergent explanations, we must first disprove the explanation with the fewest assumptions and steps.

This principle challenged the prevailing philosophy of the time, often involving overly elaborate explanations for natural phenomena. By advocating for simplicity first, Ockham promoted a shift towards a more empirical and observation-based approach to understanding the world. This shift laid the groundwork for the development of modern scientific methodology, which values parsimony and economy of explanation.

In philosophy, Ockham’s Razor has been used to argue against unnecessary metaphysical constructs. For example, it has been employed to critique theories that invoke multiple types of substances or entities when fewer would suffice. In science, the principle guides researchers to favor simpler, more straightforward theories until complexity is warranted by additional evidence. This has led to more streamlined theories in all scientific fields.

So the next time someone starts to tell you about how aliens built the pyramids at Giza — remember Ockham’s Razor. Before we start praising aliens for our architectural marvels, we first have to disprove the far simpler and elegant answer that humans built them. Which they did...

Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein

The Structure of Philosophical Claims

Having looked to Ockham’s Razor, and seen the evolution of philosophical debate throughout the Classical and Medieval eras, it’s time to take stock of how a proper philosophical claim is made.

Philosophical claims are structured arguments that consist of premises and conclusions. The premise of an argument is a statement offered to support the conclusion (ie. the reason why someone should agree with the argument). Conversely, the conclusion is the statement that one should accept based on the premises.

Consider this simple argument: “All apples are red. This is an apple. Therefore, this is red.” Here, the premises are “All apples are red” and “This is an apple,” and the conclusion is “This is red.” However, as one might imagine, not all apples are red, revealing a flaw in the first premise. This recognition leads to the next crucial step in philosophical reasoning: evaluating arguments.

Evaluating an argument involves three key criteria: truth, validity, and soundness. Truth asks whether the premises are factually correct. Validity assesses the logical structure of the argument. For an argument to be sound, it must have both a valid structure and true premises.

Truth. First, truth seeks to establish that the supporting reasons are true. If your premise is not true, the rest of your argument is already false. This was the problem in the apple argument above. The premise that all apples are red is not true because sometimes apples are other colors.

Validity. Next, validity asks if the reasons support the conclusion. Most often, this involves questioning our assumptions. A valid argument will be one in which the reasons support the conclusion in a way that the conclusion follows from the reasons offered.

Here’s an example of a sound argument:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
So Socrates is mortal.

Another consideration is whether we have true premises but still arrive at a false conclusion. Look at this invalid example to see how this works:

The president of the United States must be at least 35 years old. (True)
Chris Evans is at least 35 years old. (True)
So, Chris Evans must be the president of the United States. (False)

Both premises are true. However, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Therefore, the argument is invalid.

All this being said, I humbly offer you the following advice: having a good argument is not the same thing as convincing others of your argument. Many other factors may interfere with your argument’s effectiveness (psychology, stubbornness, sheer difference in intelligence, etc.). Ultimately, philosophy is about coming to peace with your own views and process — to know you’re doing your best. To know thyself...

Having looked to Ockham’s Razor, and seen the evolution of philosophical debate throughout the Classical and Medieval eras, it’s time to take stock of how a proper philosophical claim is made.

Philosophical claims are structured arguments that consist of premises and conclusions. The premise of an argument is a statement offered to support the conclusion (ie. the reason why someone should agree with the argument). Conversely, the conclusion is the statement that one should accept based on the premises.

Consider this simple argument: “All apples are red. This is an apple. Therefore, this is red.” Here, the premises are “All apples are red” and “This is an apple,” and the conclusion is “This is red.” However, as one might imagine, not all apples are red, revealing a flaw in the first premise. This recognition leads to the next crucial step in philosophical reasoning: evaluating arguments.

Evaluating an argument involves three key criteria: truth, validity, and soundness. Truth asks whether the premises are factually correct. Validity assesses the logical structure of the argument. For an argument to be sound, it must have both a valid structure and true premises.

Truth. First, truth seeks to establish that the supporting reasons are true. If your premise is not true, the rest of your argument is already false. This was the problem in the apple argument above. The premise that all apples are red is not true because sometimes apples are other colors.

Validity. Next, validity asks if the reasons support the conclusion. Most often, this involves questioning our assumptions. A valid argument will be one in which the reasons support the conclusion in a way that the conclusion follows from the reasons offered.

Here’s an example of a sound argument:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
So Socrates is mortal.

Another consideration is whether we have true premises but still arrive at a false conclusion. Look at this invalid example to see how this works:

The president of the United States must be at least 35 years old. (True)
Chris Evans is at least 35 years old. (True)
So, Chris Evans must be the president of the United States. (False)

Both premises are true. However, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Therefore, the argument is invalid.

All this being said, I humbly offer you the following advice: having a good argument is not the same thing as convincing others of your argument. Many other factors may interfere with your argument’s effectiveness (psychology, stubbornness, sheer difference in intelligence, etc.). Ultimately, philosophy is about coming to peace with your own views and process — to know you’re doing your best. To know thyself...

Last Section: What is Philosophy
This Section: Classical Thinking
Next Section: Scientific Thinking

Pythagoreans Celebrate the Sunrise | Fyodor Bronnikov, 1869

Key Terms for this Section
Philosophy · Metaphysics · Ad Hoc Stories · Arché · Epistemology

1.1 | What is Critical Thinking?

Why take this Class?

We all need to think well.

Our lives are guided by and dependent on our decisions. If you’re not being proactive about those decisions, someone else is making your decisions for you. Your position at work. How you spend your afternoons. Who represents your political interests. Most people’s lives could be vastly improved upon by learning how to think better. Is this the right purchase for me? Is this a deal I should make? Is this a person or source I should trust? The missing piece here is wisdom.

Wisdom is exercising knowledge and experience to examine oneself (and/or a situation) to arrive at a more rational and ethical outcome. Wisdom informs our benevolence, experience, and technical skills. A person may be compassionate but lack the wisdom to apply her heart to the right cause. A person may be older but still stuck in outdated thinking. Or a person may have great technique — say, as a chef — but lack the necessary wisdom to run their own restaurant.

If it helps, think of this as a course on intellectual self-defense.

At the end of the day, I want you to be your own person — and I want that independent thinker to think well. The discipline of philosophy holds autonomy and intelligence in very high regard. To this end, this course will have a sharp focus on thinking well for yourself. The world is filled with people who would be very happy to take your time, money, and efforts — often expecting you to thank them for the privilege! We are going to be better than that. We are going to be prepared.

In preparation for your life after college, this course integrates the best theoretical knowledge with practical application. We will comprehensively explore key philosophical concepts and their relevance to everyday life. You will engage with some of Western history’s most famous philosophical ideas, learning how to apply them to real-world scenarios.

In return, your assignments will be your opportunity to develop and present well-structured philosophical arguments in a safe environment. This will involve exploring different methods for framing philosophical questions and crafting cogent responses, allowing you to engage critically with complex issues. Through this process, your ability to think well for yourself will expand as you analyze and articulate nuanced perspectives on philosophical matters. No other course puts you face to face with your own thinking quite as well as an Introduction to Philosophy.

Treading Toward Philosophy

You have no doubt heard the word “philosophy” before. The popular idea of philosophy often comes in the guise of a catchy phrase or a clever bumper sticker like:

• Do to others as you would have them do to you.
• Always look out for #1.
• When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
• All’s well that ends well.
• All you need is love.

But such sayings are more aptly called adages or proverbs. Their purpose is to encapsulate a cultural worldview in a few snappy words. Sadly, for the uninitiated, this is often the only kind of “philosophy” they will ever encounter. There is, however, an academic meta-discipline called “philosophy” that is far more complex than what is generally discussed in public. It is the first academic discipline, it is where the word “academic” comes from, and is the fundament of all other academic disciplines.

Think about it. There is a Philosophy of Biology (ask a medical researcher). There is a Philosophy of Law (ask a law professor). There is a Philosophy of Music (ask a conductor). All academic fields make philosophical claims. Ignorance of this fact does not mean philosophy is irrelevant to one’s work — it simply means there will be limitations to one’s potential in that field. The best artists, teachers, and business professionals lean into philosophy as a toolset for achieving well beyond their peers.

The academic discipline of philosophy, which you will participate in for this course, is as rigorous as international law, biotechnology, or particle physics. American philosophers hold academic conferences, belong to professional associations, and compete with one another to publish in the most highly–regarded, peer-reviewed publications (eg. the publishing houses of Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.). Professional philosophers attend nationally televised debates, are studied by top filmmakers and authors, are quoted by presidents and prime ministers, and shape political policies around the globe. This is the kind of philosophy we will study in this course.

Throughout our time together, we will learn how some of the greatest minds in the history of Western civilization tackled some of our most fundamental questions. Now, given both the finite amount of time we have together, as well as the fact that this is an introductory course that assumes no previous knowledge of philosophy, I’ve had to make some tough choices about what we will study. We will focus our course on four fundamental philosophical questions: 1) What can we know? 2) What should we do? 3) What is our purpose? And we will end our course with 4) a philosophical discussion on the nature of beauty and representation. These questions will lead to us investigating further questions, such as:

Epistemology

1a. What is the difference between philosophy and other stories about the world?
1b. What is the nature of existence?
1c. Doesn’t science answer all the big questions now?
1d. What is the relationship between one’s subjectivity and truth?

Moral Philosophy

2a. What defines a good moral character?
2b. What compels us to cooperate together?
2c. What obligations do we have to one another?
2d. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Existentialism

3a. How do I aim for happiness?
3b. Why do I feel so alone when surrounded by people?
3c. What is the meaning of life?
3d. What is the nature of the self?

The Philosophy of Art

4a. Why can’t I describe some of my feelings?
4b. Are my judgments socially constructed?
4c. How is current technology changing meaning and representation in our world?

What is Critical Thinking?

This kind of study, reflection, and evaluation creates a certain type of person: the critical thinker. A critical thinker is a more open-minded kind of thinker. This open-mindedness generally arises from being exposed to multiple, divergent viewpoints without a preconceived notion of which view is “right.” Analysis of such diversity exercises both your analytic and creative skillsets, ultimately rendering you a more knowledgeable and self-aware person. Many of these qualities occur naturally in some people, but others must be developed no matter who you are. That is, while some of us may be naturally creative or curious, none of us can say we are naturally knowledgeable. Thus, we cultivate critical thinking with time and study — which is exactly what you’ll be doing as a student in this philosophy course.

1.2 | Critical Thinking in 3 Stages

The study of philosophy actively encourages you to become a critical thinker. At a basic level, we can understand Critical Thinking as the ability to solve intellectual problems or challenges in a logical and rigorous manner. I find William Perry’s 3 Stage Model useful in appreciating and understanding how one becomes a Critical Thinker. His stages begin with passive thinking and end with critical thinking. As you progress through the course, try to recognize yourself within these stages and realize that, with effort, you can progress to the final stage of critical thinking.

Childhood: Passive Thinking

William Perry refers to passive thinking as the “Garden of Eden” stage. In this toddler–like stage, moral and philosophical questions are generally seen in black and white. That’s just the way it is... Actions and statements are either right or wrong, with little room for nuance, negotiation, or compromise. Typically, these claims are based on what legal authorities unilaterally claim (often parents or schoolteachers). However, as every teenager knows, authority figures are imperfect, and the world isn’t made of clear-cut, black-and-white situations. Critical questions often arise out of murky circumstances requiring more nuance than simple, blind obedience. Once we make this adolescent realization, Perry says we move into the second stage, where “anything goes.”

Adolescence: Relative Thinking

In the Anything Goes stage — typically beginning when we’re teens but remaining with many people throughout their lives — we realize authorities are fallible. We decide that if we can’t trust the authorities to be perfect, then no single point of view is better than any other. If there is no absolute right or wrong given by a perfect authority figure, then we can fall to relativism or nihilism (more on this in Module 2). At this stage, we generally find that most things are a matter of opinion. But if that’s the case, then there can be no truths to guide society. What follows from this is the thinking that author Isaac Asimov famously summarized as “My ignorance is as good as your knowledge.” Meaning there are no experts. Everyone with a Facebook account and Internet connection can claim whatever they like, and no one’s opinion is any better than anyone else’s. What a scary thought!

Expertise: Critical Thinking

In the final stage, we understand what it means to think critically when we accede to one simple fact: EXPERTISE EXISTS. As a critical thinker, I’m clever enough to know what I don’t know. I don’t know how to fix an air conditioner. I don’t know how to build a rocket ship. I don’t know how to coach a basketball team — but there are experts who do! The critical thinker acknowledges that some viewpoints are much more informed than others because there are rational, compelling reasons to supporting their claims. Arguments are better or worse because of the strength of their argument. Critical thinking shows us that we are responsible for exploring multiple well-informed perspectives, evaluating reasons for their sources and rigor, and to develop informed conclusions that help us make better decisions.

As a critical thinker, you will be able to see that some arguments are better than others because of the logic and reasoning behind them. You will know why you find something amiss, not simply because it’s what your family believes or what you’ve always been told, but because of logical reasoning. It is with this academic toolset that you will best acquire the lifelong skills necessary to encounter others with similar training on an even footing.

Keep in mind as we proceed that this course isn’t designed to be agreeable. You will read and hear things from the text, your peers, and perhaps your professor that may challenge your preconceptions. That’s not a bad thing. Consider steel at a weapons forge. A blacksmith challenges the integrity of steel repeatedly, beating out impurities and refining it until it is strong enough to withstand the weight of its design. If you surround yourself with others who agree with you, if you never test yourself, your opinions can never be sharpened.

1.3 | Ad Hoc Stories • Thales

For the Love of Wisdom

Philosophy is an ancient Greek concept, meaning the “love of wisdom.” Armed with reason and logic, Philosophy is the foundation of all other disciplines. Philosophy gave us the rich heritage of ideas that brought us out of monarchy and into democracy, from slavery to emancipation, from trial by ordeal to trial by jury, from alchemy to chemistry, from a tutored elite to an educated public, and from rights for only a few to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It informed the civil rights struggles of Mary Wollstonecraft and Martin Luther King, Jr., And it informs everything today, from calculus to quantum physics.

Before Philosophy: Ad Hoc Stories

Before the advent of philosophy, ancient people explained the world through ad hoc stories — simplistic, “just so” narratives that addressed critical questions about life and the natural world. In the Iron Age, illness and death were often attributed to the will of Greek gods or malevolent spirits. While providing comfort and a sense of order, these explanations did not seek to rationally understand the underlying causes of phenomena. Instead, they offered simple, culturally acceptable answers for their time. Iron Age Greeks enjoyed ad hoc stories like Hesiod’s Theogony and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. These epic poems provided rich narratives of gods and heroes and embedded moral lessons and cultural norms. Hesiod’s Theogony (which delves into the origins and genealogies of the gods) explores themes of justice and order. Homer’s epics illustrate heroic Greek values like honesty, bravery, and intelligent problem-solving while also exploring the ethical consequences of moral choices and actions. These values would resonate with later Greek philosophical inquiry.

By the 500s BCE, some Greek thinkers began to set aside their traditional narratives and sought instead rational explanations for natural phenomena. What makes the sun rise? What pulls the tide in? What are we made of?

These trailblazers preferred reason and evidence over myth and superstition. The earliest philosophers, like Thales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus, pioneered this view, emphasizing the pursuit of rationality rather than blindly accepting cultural tradition. This evolution marked the beginning of systematic philosophy, transitioning from ad hoc explanations to a more logical approach to understanding the world.

The First Philosopher | Thales

Systematic philosophical inquiry begins in the West with Thales (ca. 548 BCE), who lived in the Greek city of Miletus (today on the Turkish coast). His work represents a profound departure from the former mythological explanations of the world. Like many before him, Thales was deeply interested in discovering the fundamental, deep structure of reality. Before Thales, poets and scribes had described the origin and nature of reality in poetry, scripture, and song. But Thales sought something new — a rational description of reality that did not rely on culture or tradition. Thales sought wisdom that would be just as true at home in Greece as in Africa, Europe, or Asia. So, after years of pondering this universal question, Thales made the first recorded philosophical claim. He deduced that water is the fundamental substance or arché of all things.

Much of ancient Greek culture was centered on the search for the “arche” of existence. What is the foundation of reality? Thales’ vote was water.

Thales reasoned that all things are made of tiny elements and that at its core, water must be the arche of life — the origin from which everything arises and into which everything eventually returns. This idea reflects a significant shift from attributing natural phenomena to the will of the gods. Herein, we find Thales seeking a unifying principle explaining the physical world. Thales’ went on to reason that the mundane physical world is separate from the divine world and, thus, comprehensible through human reason. His Greek division of the world into the physical and the essential represents the first steps toward Dualism, which we’ll pick up on in our discussion of Plato (Sec. 2.3).

Later, a student of Thales’ Milesian School named Anaximenes expanded on Thales’ ideas. He proposed that all matter is a form of air (not water) and transforms into different substances through processes of condensation and rarefaction. For Thales, water made sense because all living things require water. But Anaximenes points out that all living things also require air, which appears to be all around us. In this way, these thinkers were using deductive reasoning (rather than cultural traditions) to describe the world. Eventually, the Milesian School held that the same natural laws govern both the earthly and celestial realms. This claim anticipated later scientific discoveries like Isaac Newton’s planetary physics.

After Anaximenes, Empedocles expanded our philosophical understanding further by introducing the metaphysical concept of four fundamental elements — earth, air, fire, and water. This view would remain popular for over a thousand years. And yet, some thinkers dared to go further. Anaxagoras proposed that all things are composed of infinitely small particles. This idea was further developed by Leucippus and Democritus, who introduced atomism, positing that reality consists of indivisible atoms that are always in motion (atomos is Greek for “indivisible”). Democritus’ use of reason laid the foundation for the modern scientific method and our present understanding of the natural world.

Together, these earliest philosophers are collectively known as the Presocratics, as they represent our best philosophical ideas before the intellectual titan, Socrates (470-399 BCE).

1.4 | What is Philosophy • Pythagoras

Math & Reason | Pythagoras

The Presocratic philosopher Pythagoras (ca. 570-495 BCE) represents a pivotal shift in philosophical thought, bridging the materialist approach of his Milesian predecessors with a more abstract, idealist perspective. Before Pythagoras, the Presocratics held materialist views, seeking to understand the world through tangible substances like water, air, and fire. Their philosophy began with observable “stuff” and then abstracted to more general principles about the arche and the nature of existence. This philosophical investigation of reality is known as Metaphysics (lit. meta “beyond” the physical).

However, Pythagoras departed from Materialism and instead embraced Idealism. That is, Pythagoras’ philosophical approach starts with abstract concepts and seeks to apply them to the real world. For Pythagoras, the arche was not made of mere physical stuff like water and earth but of abstract concepts like numbers. His Pythagorean Theorem, one of the most famous contributions to mathematics, exemplifies this approach. By abstracting the concept of right-angled triangles and their properties, Pythagoras demonstrated that mathematical truths have practical applications and can explain our physical world.

Here, with the logic of mathematics, Pythagoras found the kind of universal truth that Thales had first sought about fifty years before him.

Pythagoras developed something of a cult following in Greece, wherein he promoted the idea that numbers and mathematical relationships underpin the grand structure of the cosmos. Math could be used to explain universal truths about music (eg. musical octaves and notes), art (eg. ratio and proportion), and even the constellations of the night sky. This integration of abstraction with empirical observation marked a significant departure from the earlier materialist approaches and laid the groundwork for fields as diverse as architecture, physics, and computer science.

Why Study Philosophy?

In the last two lessons, we’ve seen how philosophy got its start in ancient Greece. Today, the study of philosophy continues to offer value to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of life and the world around them. One of the primary reasons to study philosophy is to gain practical wisdom. This is not talked about often enough in our culture. When we go to college, read a book, or even talk with friends, we tend to limit our understanding of “learning” to technical pursuits. The words technical and technique arise from the Greek word “techné.” Learning the violin is a techné. Running a cash register is a techné. Even solving an engineering problem is a techné. These are pursuits for which a technical manual would be quite handy. But there is another form of knowledge apart from techné called “sophia,” or wisdom. And those who love wisdom are called philosophers — from philo (love) and sophia (wisdom).

Practical wisdom is not limited to a specialized field like being a nurse, engineer, or painter. Rather, wisdom can be applied universally to all of our pursuits. It offers us context and inspiration to guide our decision-making and problem-solving in everyday situations. While techné promises us methods and facts, sophia (wisdom) offers us the tools of analysis and evaluation. It encourages a deeper exploration of fundamental questions about our existence and purpose, leading to a richer and more meaningful understanding of one’s life and experiences.

The Major Branches of Philosophy

Metaphysics (Philosophy of the Real)

• From the Ancient Greek phuskia (physics) and meta (beyond or after)

• What is real? What does it mean to exist? Is there more than the physical?

• “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Epistemology (Philosophy of Knowledge)

• From the Ancient Greek episteme (knowledge) and logos (reason)

• How can we know? What is knowledge? Truth? Belief? Faith?

• “Of what can we be certain?”

Ethics (Moral Philosophy)

• From the Ancient Greek ethikḗ (moral character)

• What is justice? What is fair? Do character or consequences matter more?

• “Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?”

Political & Social Philosophy

• From the Ancient Greek politēs (citizen) and polis (city)

• Who gets what? What laws should we have? How should we spend taxes?

• “Since we must live together, what should our government look like?”

Aesthetics (Philosophy of Art)

• From the Ancient Greek aisthesthai (to perceive)

• What is beauty? What is art? Is taste subjective? Why does art matter?

• “Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?”

So, I bid you a heartfelt welcome to your Introduction to Western Philosophy. As the video below posits, the question is not “Why do we study philosophy?” No. Life is structured in such a way that we are condemned to philosophize. We have questions and want to know! The question is, “Will we philosophize well?”

Let’s aim, then, to think well.

Optional Video: introduction to Western Philosophy (auto-generated CC).

This Section: Why Philosophy?
Next Section: Classical Thinking

MODULE I – What Can We Know?

Sec 1 • Why Philosophy?

1.1 What is Critical Thinking?
1.2 The 3 Stages of Critical Thinking
1.3 Thales • Ad Hoc Stories
1.4 Pythagoras • What is Philosophy?

Sec 2 • Classical Thinking

2.1 Heraclitus • The Same River Twice
2.2 Socrates • Know Thyself
2.3 Plato • Leaving the Cave
2.4 St. Augustine • The City of God
2.5 St. Aquinas • On Scholastic Faith
2.6 Ockham’s Razor • Let’s Cut to the Chase

Sec 3 • Scientific Thinking

3.1 Avicenna & Maimonides • Rational Thinking
3.2 The Birth of Modernity
3.3 Descartes • Self-Evident Truth
3.4 Locke • Empirical Thinking
3.5 Popper • Science & Falsifibility
3.6 Hawking • Philosophy & Science

Sec 4 • Thinking Today

4.1 Kant • Early Phenomenology
4.2 Merleau-Ponty • Late Phenomenology
4.3 Wittgenstein • Language Games
4.4 Arendt • Post-Truth World

MODULE II – What Should We Do?

Sec 5 • Character Ethics

5.1 What is Ethics?
5.2 Aristotle • What is Virtue?
5.3 MacIntyre • Virtue Today
5.4 Socrates • Euthyphro’s Dilemma
5.5 St. Aquinas • Natural Law Theory
5.6 MLK • Natural Law & Civil Rights

Sec 6 • Contractarian Ethics

6.1 Our Natural Rights
6.2 Hobbes • Social Contract Theory
6.3 Locke • Negative Liberty
6.4 Rousseau • Positive Liberty
6.5 The Political Philosophy Horseshoe
6.6 Haidt • Against Authoritarianism

Sec 7 • Deontological Ethics

7.1 Spinoza • Universal Ethics
7.2 Ethics after Hobbes
7.3 Kant • Maxims & Reason
7.4 Kant • Deontological Principles
7.5 Ross • Prima Facie Duties
7.6 Autonomy & Consent

Sec 8 • Consequentialist Ethics

8.1 Aristippus & Bentham • On Hedonism
8.2 Machiavelli • On Consequentialism
8.3 Mill • On Utilitarianism
8.4 Revisiting Kant & Mill

MODULE III – What is Our Purpose?

Sec 9 • The Personal Struggle

9.1 What Would Epicurus Buy?
9.2 Epicurus • The 3 Things You Actually Need
9.3 Lucretius • How to Live Without Fear
9.4 Heraclitus • Nature & Self-Control
9.5 Zeno • How to Be Happy (ie. Stoicism)
9.6 Pigliucci • Grit & the Modern Stoic

Sec 10 • The Modern Struggle

10.1 Hegel • The Goal of Modernity
10.2 Marx • Dialectical Materialism
10.3 Marx • The Lonely Worker
10.4 Dilthey & Habermas • Why Marxism Failed
10.5 Gadamer • Modernity & Interpretation
10.6 Heidegger • Modernity & Technology

Sec 11 • Against Nihilism

11.1 The Existentialists
11.2 Kierkegaard • The Crowd of Untruth
11.3 Heidegger & Camus • How to Smile Authentically
11.4 Nietzsche • Apollo vs. Dionysus
11.5 Nietzsche • The Übermensch
11.6 Levinas • The Irreducibility of the Other

Sec 12 • Toward Self-Affirmation

12.1 Sartre • The True Self
12.2 Beauvoir • Self & Partner
12.3 Arendt • Self & the Unreflective Other
12.4 Rorty & West • Self Affirmation & Shared Purpose

MODULE IV – On Art & Representation

Sec 13 • On Truth & Art

13.1 Plato • Art & Philosophy
13.2 Schopenhauer • Art & Purpose
13.3 Bell • Art & Form
13.4 Heidegger • Art & Truth
13.5 Barthes • Art & Intention
13.6 Derrida • Artist & Audience

Sec 14 • Truth & Culture

14.1 Gadamer • Truth & Representation
14.2 Kant • Truth & the Transcendent
14.3 Nietzsche • Truth & the Avant-Garde
14.4 Lyotard • Culture & Institutions
14.5 Eagleton • Culture & Value
14.6 Foucault • Culture & Hierarchy

Sec 15 • Habitus & the Hyppereal

15.1 Latour • Art & Social Truth
15.2 Bordieu • Art & Habitus
15.3 Benjamin • Art & Aura
15.4 Baudrilliard • Art & the Hyperreal