Gaurav Sagar’s Reviews > History of Western Philosophy > Status Update

Karl Marx

Karl Marx is usually thought of as the man who claimed to have made Socialism scientific, and who did more than anyone else to create the powerful movement which, by attraction and repulsion, has dominated the recent history of Europe.

Hegel was the culmination of the movement in German philosophy that started from Kant; although he often criticized Kant, his system could never have arisen if Kant's had not existed. His influence, though now diminishing, has been very great, not only or chiefly in Germany.

KANT

A. GERMAN IDEALISM IN GENERAL

Philosophy in the 18th century was dominated by the British empiricism, of whom Locke, Berkeley, and Hume may be taken as the representatives. In these men there was a conflict, of which they themselves appear to have been unaware, between their temper of mind and the tendency of their theoretical doctrines.

Hume

David Hume (1711-76) is one of the most important among philosophers, because he developed to its logical conclusion the empirical philosophy pf Locke and Berkeley, and by making it self-consistent made it incredible. He represents, in a certain sense, a dead end: in his direction, it is impossible to go further.

From the time of Locke down to the present day, there have been in Europee two main types of philosophy, and one of these owes both its doctrines and its method to Locke, while the other was dervied first from Descartes and then from Kant, Kant himself thought he had made a synthesis of the philosophy derived from Descartes and that derived from Locke; but his cannot be admitted.....

Locke's Theory of Knowledge

John Locke is the apostle of the Revolution of 1688, the most moderate and the most successful of all revolutions. It aims were modest, but they were exactly achieved, and no subsequent revolution has hitherto been found necessary in England.

The Reformation and Conter-Reformation

The Reformation and Conter-Reformation, alike, represent the rebellionof less civilized nations against the intellectual domination of Italy.

The Eclipse of the Papacy

The thirteenth century had brought to completion a great synthesis, philosophical, theological, political, and social, which had been slowly built up by the combination of many elements.

The Twelfth Century

Four aspects of the twelfth century are especially interesting to us:

(1) The continued conflict of empire and papcy;
(2) The rise of the Lombard cities;
(3) The Crusades: and
(4) The growth of scholasticism.

Three Doctors of the Church

Four men are called the Doctors of the Western Church: St Ambrose, St Jerome, St Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great. Of these the first three were contemporaries, while the fourth belonged to a later date. I shall, in this chapter, give some account of the life and times of the first three, reservign for a later chapter an account of the doctrines of St Augustine, who is, most imp