Western Philosophy

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Schopenhauer

German philosophers of the 19th century who came after Hegel rejected Hegel’s faith in reason and progress. Arthur Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea (1819) argued that existence is fundamentally irrational and an expression of a blind, meaningless force—the human will, which encompasses the will to live, the will to reproduce, and so forth. Will, however, entails continuous striving and results in disappointment and suffering. Schopenhauer offered two avenues of escape from irrational will: through the contemplation of art, which enables one to endure the tragedy of life, and through the renunciation of will and of the striving for happiness.

Schopenhauer was one of the first Western philosophers to be influenced by Indian philosophy, which was then appearing in Europe in translation. The influence of Buddhist thought, for example, appears in his sense that the world is full of evil and suffering which can be overcome only through resignation and renunciation. Schopenhauer’s own view that an irrational force lies at the center of life subsequently influenced voluntaristic psychology, a school of psychology that emphasized the causes for our choices; sociological studies that examine nonrational factors affecting people; and cultural attitudes that play down the value of reason in life.

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Nietzsche

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche continued the revolt against reason initiated by the romantic movement, but he scornfully repudiated Schopenhauer’s negative, resigned attitude. Instead, Nietzsche affirmed the value of vitality, strength, and the supremacy of an existence that is purely egoistic. He also scorned the Christian and democratic ideas of the equal worth of human beings, maintaining that it is up to a few aristocrats to refuse to subordinate themselves to a state or cause, and thereby achieve self-realization and greatness. For Nietzsche the power to be strong was the greatest value in life. Although Nietzsche valued geniuses over dictators, his beliefs helped bolster the ideas of the National Socialists (Nazis) who gained control of Germany in the 1930s (see National Socialism).

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Kierkegaard

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard developed another distinctive philosophy of life. Kierkegaard’s ideas, which were not appreciated until a century after their appearance, were literary, religious, and self-revealing rather than systematic in character. They stressed the importance of experiences that the intellectual mind judges as absurd, including the experiences of angst (“anxiety”) and “fear and trembling.” (The latter phrase is the title of one of his books.) Such experiences, in his view, lead first to despair and eventually to religious faith. Kierkegaard discussed this process in terms of the religious person who is commanded by God to sacrifice his own most cherished treasures, as in the example of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac in the Old Testament. Although Abraham cannot understand this absurd request from God, he decides to obey his commitment to God. Through such terrible experiences, Kierkegaard claimed, we learn that humanity’s relationship to God is absolute and all else relative. What is most significant in a person’s life, Kierkegaard concluded, are the decisions made in such ethical crises.

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Kierkegaard’s ideas came to have importance in the 20th century. The concepts of existence, dread, the absurd, and decision were influential in Germany, France, and English-speaking countries. The condition of humankind during an epoch with two world wars gave these ideas a new relevance; the philosophers who developed them founded the movement now known as existentialism.

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Bentham and Mill

Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, both economists as well as philosophers, dominated philosophy in England during the 19th century. Bentham originated the ethical principle of utilitarianism—that what is useful is good—and Mill developed and refined the doctrine. The utilitarians argued for an ethical principle that would be superior to the self-interest of the individual, just as Kant had established a rational principle of moral law superior to individual desire, by which people’s conduct ought to be governed. The utilitarians based their principle on the theory that everyone desires his or her own happiness, that people have to find that happiness in society, and that consequently we all have an interest in the general happiness. They took the position that whatever produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people is what is most useful for all. This is the meaning of the principle of utility, or benefit, from which utilitarianism takes its name.

In evaluating happiness, Bentham believed it possible to measure quantitatively the pleasures resulting from each action—the pleasures of oneself and the pleasure of others—and thus to decide in any instance what promoted the greatest amount of happiness. Mill partly abandoned that idea and maintained that one should consider the quality, or type, of pleasure as well as the quantity. Mill applied utilitarian principles to social justice, and the principle of utility influenced legislation that brought about social and economic reforms in Great Britain.

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Karl Marx and Marxism

The most influential achievement in political philosophy during the 19th century was the development of Marxism (see Political Theory). German political philosopher Karl Marx, who created the system known as Marxism, and his collaborator Friedrich Engels accepted the basic form of Hegel’s dialectic of history, but they made crucial modifications. For them history was a matter of the development not of Absolute Spirit but of the material conditions governing humanity’s economic existence. In their view, later known as historical materialism, the history of society is a history of class struggle in which the ruling class uses religion and other traditions and institutions, as well as its economic power, to reinforce its domination over the working classes. Human culture, according to Marx, is dependent on economic (material) conditions and serves economic ends. Religion, he concluded, is “the opiate of the masses” that serves the political end of suppressing mass revolution. Marxism is a theory of revolution, of history, of economics, and of politics, and it served as the ideology for Communism. Although he was a philosopher Marx had disdain for merely theoretical intellectual work, stating, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it.”

Marx’s view of human history is both profoundly pessimistic and profoundly optimistic. Its pessimism lies in his belief that history reflects the oppression of the many by a small minority, who thereby secure economic and political power. It is optimistic on two counts. First, Marx believed that technical innovations bring about new ways of meeting human needs and make it increasingly possible for people to satisfy their deepest wants and to develop and perfect their individual capacities. Second, Marx claimed to have proved that the long history of oppression would soon end when the masses rise up and usher in a revolution that will create a classless utopian society. The first idea enabled Marx to bring attention in the modern era to Aristotle’s idealistic conception of human flourishing, which called upon people to develop and manifest many different abilities, including intellectual, artistic, and physical skills. The second idea motivated much radical activity during the 20th century, including the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the Communist victory in China in 1949, and the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

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