Assignment

Hedonism
Epicureanism
Rationalism
Empiricism
Utilitarianism
Pragmatism
Stoic philosophy
Phenomenology
Logical positivism

Hedonism is a school of philosophy from the Socratic and Hellenistic periods of

ancient Greece, which holds that pleasure is the most important pursuit of
mankind, and that we should always act so as to maximize our own pleasure.
The earliest manifestation of Hedonism was Cyrenaicism (which was popular in
the 4th and 3rd Centuries B.C.), although arguably, Democritus had propounded
a very similar philosophy even earlier. As a movement, it was founded by
Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435 - 360 B.C.), a pupil of Socrates, who emphasized one
side only of Socratic teaching (that happiness is one of the ends of moral action)
to the exclusion of all else. The Cyrenaics emphasized bodily gratification as more
intense and preferable to mental pleasures, and denied that we should defer
immediate gratification for the sake of long-term gain, two major points of
departure from the similar, but more modest, school of Epicureanism.
Epicureanism is a Hellenistic school or system of philosophy based on the
teachings of the ancient Greek philospher Epicurus. It was founded around 307
B.C., and was based in Epicurus' home and garden (the school was often called
"The Garden"). Epicurus was a materialist, following in the steps of Democritus
and the school of Atomism.
In Ethics, Epicureanism teaches that happiness (or the greatest good) is to seek
modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquillity, freedom from fear and
the absence of bodily pain. This state of tranquillity can be obtained through
knowledge of the workings of the world, the leading of a simple, moderate life
and the limiting of desires
In Metaphysics, Epicureanism emphasizes the neutrality of the gods and their
non-interference with human lives. Despite some tendencies towards Atheism, it
does not actually deny the existence of gods, which it conceives of as blissful and
immortal, yet material, beings, made up of atoms and inhabiting the empty
spaces between worlds in the vastness of infinite space.
Rationalism is a philosophical movement which gathered momentum during the
Age of Reason of the 17th Century. It is usually associated with the introduction of
mathematical methods into philosophy during this period by the major rationalist
figures, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. The preponderance of French Rationalists
in the 18th Century Age of Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Charles de Secondat (Baron de Montesquieu) (1689 - 1755), is
often known as French Rationalism.
Rationalism is any view appealing to intellectual and deductive reason (as
opposed to sensory experience or any religious teachings) as the source of
knowledge or justification. Thus, it holds that some propositions are knowable by
us by intuition alone, while others are knowable by being deduced through valid
arguments from intuited propositions. It relies on the idea that reality has a
rational structure in that all aspects of it can be grasped through mathematical
and logical principles, and not simply through sensory experience.
Empiricism is the theory that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It
emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception,

in the formation of ideas, and argues that the only knowledge humans can have
is a posteriori (i.e. based on experience). Most empiricists also discount the
notion of innate ideas or innatism (the idea that the mind is born with ideas or
knowledge and is not a "blank slate" at birth).
In order to build a more complex body of knowledge from these direct
observations, induction or inductive reasoning (making generalizations based on
individual instances) must be used. This kind of knowledge is therefore also
known as indirect empirical knowledge.
Empiricism is contrasted with Rationalism, the theory that the mind may
apprehend some truths directly, without requiring the medium of the senses.
The term "empiricism" has a dual etymology, stemming both from the Greek
word for "experience" and from the more specific classical Greek and Roman
usage of "empiric", referring to a physician whose skill derives from practical
experience as opposed to instruction in theory (this was it's first usage).
The term "empirical" (rather than "empiricism") also refers to the method of
observation and experiment used in the natural and social sciences. It is a
fundamental requirement of the scientific method that all hypotheses and
theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than
resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition or revelation. Hence, science is
considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.
Utilitarianism is a movement in Ethics and Political Philosophy in 19th Century
England, which proposed "the greatest good for the greatest number" as the
overriding rule in all moral decision.
Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by
its contribution to overall utility in maximizing happiness or pleasure as summed
among all people, i.e. the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
It starts from the basis that pleasure and happiness are intrinsically valuable, that
pain and suffering are intrinsically disvaluable, and that anything else has value
only in its causing happiness or preventing suffering. See the section on doctrine
of Utilitarianism for more details.
Pragmatism is a late 19th Century and early 20th Century school of philosophy
which considers practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of
both meaning and truth. At its simplest, something is true only insofar as it
works. However, Pragmatism is not a single philosophy, and is more a style or
way of doing philosophy.
In general terms, Pragmatism asserts that any theory that proves itself more
successful in predicting and controlling our world than its rivals can be considered
to be nearer the truth. It argues that the meaning of any concept can be equated
with the conceivable operational or practical consequences of whatever the
concept portrays. Like Positivism, it asserts that the scientific method is generally
best suited to theoretical inquiry, although Pragmatism also accepts that the
settlement of doubt can also be achieved by tenacity and persistence, the

authority of a source of ready-made beliefs or other methods. For more details,

see the section on the doctrine of Pragmatism.
The school's founder, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, first
stated the Pragmatic Maxim in the late 19th Century (and re-stated it in many
different ways over the years) as a maxim of logic and as a reaction to
metaphysical theories. The Pragmatic Maxim is actually a family of principles, not
all equivalent (at least on the surface), and there are numerous subtle variations
with implications which reach into almost every corner of philosophical thought.
The school of Pragmatism reached its peak in the early 20th Century philosophies
of William James and John Dewey. The term "pragmatism" was first used in print
by James, who credited Peirce with coining the term during the early 1870s.
Stoicism is a Hellenistic school of philosophy, developed by the Greek philosopher
Zeno of Citium around 300 B.C., which teaches the development of self-control
and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions in order to develop
clear judgment and inner calm and the ultimate goal of freedom from suffering
(see the section on the doctrine of Stoicism for more details).
Stoicism is not just a set of beliefs or ethical claims, however, but rather a way
of life, involving constant practice and training, and incorporating the practice of
logic, Socratic dialogue and self-dialogue, contemplation of death, and a kind of
meditation aimed at training one's attention to remain in the present moment.
Stoicism was originally based on the moral ideas of the Cynic school (Zeno of
Citium was a student of the important Cynic Crates of Thebes), and toned down
some of the harsher principles of Cynicism with some moderation and real-world
practicality. During its initial phase, Stoicism was generally seen as a back-tonature movement, critical of superstitions and taboos (based on the Stoic idea
that the law of morality is the same as Nature).
Phenomenology is a philosophical tradition or movement of the first half of the
20th Century, developed largely by the German philosophers Edmund Husserl
and Martin Heidegger, which is based on the premise that reality consists of
objects and events ("phenomena") as they are perceived or understood in the
human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness.
It is the study of experience and how we experience. It studies structures of
conscious experience as experienced from a subjective or first-person point of
view, along with its "intentionality" (the way an experience is directed toward a
certain object in the world). It then leads to analyses of conditions of the
possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits,
background social practices and, often, language. For more details, see the
section on the doctrine of Phenomenology.
Logical Positivism (later also known as Logical Empiricism) is a 20th Century
school of philosophy that developed out of Positivism and the early Analytic
Philosophy movement, and which campaigned for a systematic reduction of all
human knowledge to logical and scientific foundations.

According to Logical Positivists, a statement is meaningful only if it is either

purely formal (essentially, mathematics and logic) or capable of empirical
verification. This effectively resulted in an almost complete rejection of
Metaphysics (and to a large extent Ethics) on the grounds that it is unverifiable.
Logical Positivism was also committed to the idea of "Unified Science", or the
development of a common language in which all scientific propositions can be
expressed, usually by means of various "reductions" or "explications" of the
terms of one science to the terms of another more fundamental one. For more
details, see the section on the doctrine of Logical Positivism.
The most important early figures in the development of Logical Positivism were
the Bohemian-Austrian Positivist philosopher Ernst Mach (1838 - 1916) and the
Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein (especially his "Tractatus" of 1921, a text of great
importance for Logical Positivists).