Nietzsche saw the morality of the individual as herd minded morality. He believed it is instinctive in human nature to conform the general consensus by striving to be perceived as ‘good’ by our fellow man. Nietzsche identifies the evolutionary difference between man and ape as the contrast that will be shown between Ubermensch and man. Nietzsche saw the Ubermensch as a new evolutionary stage of mankind, a man freed from traditional restrictive values that would exercised their will to power. The Ubermensch, in Nietzsche’s view, would be the
As free beings we were obligated to do what was 'reasonable', a free person has to act rationally - has to act without inconsistency. His assistance to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, as well as aesthetics has had a thoughtful impact on nearly every philosophical faction that followed him. It is unfeasible, Kant argues, to expand knowledge to the supersensible monarchy of tentative metaphysics. The cause that knowledge has these restraints, Kant argues, is that the mentality plays a vigorous role in comprising the features of knowledge and restraining the mind's admittance to the empirical monarchy of space and time. 4 John Stuart Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham.
Self-autonomy versus the embodiment of society; these contrasting perceptions of power in regards to the sovereign individual are the foundations of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault’s individual genealogies of free will and an individualized self. Though the concept of power plays a significant role in each philosopher’s establishment of the sovereign individual, it is the impacting nature of societal force that drives separate conceptions towards attaining such free will. It is in Nietzsche’s genealogy where one may only truly come to self-determination by transcending the ideals of society, and elaborating solely on one’s inner mastery. Contrary to this concept, Foucault proposes that to enhance one’s inner strength and power, one must embrace that which society imposes upon humanity. It is these notions in regards to power that embellish a debate towards the construction of the sovereign individual.
As one of the most acclaimed philosophers in history, Aristotle felt as though everything exists for a reason, with a hierarchy of existence, as the less rational should serve the more rational. Immanuel Kant added on to Aristotle’s philosophy, by insisting that animals are incapable of rationale, and so they may be viewed as purely means to an end, with man representative of that end. The western tradition and system of beliefs was rocked at its foundations however, by various modern discoveries. Darwin began the questioning of the hierarchy of life, when he concluded that human beings were animals as well, possessing a natural origin, similar to that of the animal world. Darwin believed that differences between humans and animals were not that of kind, but of degree.
Above all else, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is an investigation into human nature and the structure of society. Hobbes rigorously argued for social unity established through a commonwealth to escape his troubling image of the state of nature. Hobbes' state of nature is but a hypothetical thought experiment, yet as the argument for an all powerful sovereign unfolds, it is questionable whether his argument is in fact centred upon a false generalisation of human nature. Considering the circumstances in which Thomas Hobbes was raised, the conclusions he reached concerning man kind and the state of nature are not surprising. For the entirety of his early adult life, the Thirty Years War raged in Europe causing total destruction.
The argument itself is leads down an inductive route and in itself tries to prove the existence of god, being through experience and though evidence of the existence of the universe, therefore enabling the ability for the argument to be a posteriori one; a posteriori argument starts from experience of the universe and argues by the induction back to god. Thomas’s ideas were originally from the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, whom in the end concluded that the creator of humanity and the world as we know it was caused by a very intelligent being, uncaused causer or an unmoved mover. People whom of studied the cosmological argument conclude different philosophies or hypothesises depending on what their faith or religion dies down to. Thomas Aquinas was a Theist whom of which used 3 ways to reach his conclusion of this principle; his three ways were based upon Aristotle’s philosophy of their having to be an unmoved mover. The argument
This postulate of God has origin in one’s own reason which would necessarily mean that submitting to will of God is submitting to one’s own reason. The need of God arises because the relationship between moral law and happiness is not guaranteed in this world. So here God comes to the rescue and thus necessitates the compatibility of virtue and realization of highest good. The postulate of immortality is very much interwoven with the postulate of God. Taking into account the sensuous nature of human beings, Kant states that it is very difficult for a man to be righteous without hope.
Socrates and Machiavelli were both humanist philosophers. Socrates was a philosopher of moral society. Socrates was consistently applying the moral concept of good and justice. He promoted independent thinking of one self. Machiavelli was a philosopher of power.
a) Explain what Plato meant by the Form of the Good. (25) An avid student of Socrates, Plato attempted to pass on the heritage of Socratic thinking, as well as developing his own philosophical truth. Through this, he formed his own, world-renowned theory: "The Form Of The Good" in which he specifies the difference between two worlds, the Material world (our reality) and the Idea world. The only way to get to Forms is through the "divided line", from reflections, to objects, to mathematical enquiries, to Forms (as explained in Plato’s “Analogy of the Divided Line”). However, all of those Forms lead to the goal of life, the truth, the Form of the Good.
One of the most intensely contemplated questions that philosophy has asked is what defines person’s identity. Identity is the fundamental quality of a human being, but what does “personal identity” refer to? What exactly makes us who we are? It’s easy to find identity in our physical bodies, but it is difficult to find “how ‘you’ or ‘I’ can be found in the mind, spirit or soul, since these, not having spatial reference points, are not places where anything can be located, in the normal sense of the word” (Fox). John Locke, one of the most notable philosophers of the 17th century, believed that all true knowledge came solely from human experience.