The

Famous
Philosophers

Plato
Born

428/427 or 424/423 BC
Athens
Died
348/347 BC (age c.80)
Athens
Nationality Greek
Era
Ancient philosophy

Early life
Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Plato's early life and
education. The philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active
families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who
excelled in his studies. His father contributed all which was necessary to give to his son a
good education, and, therefore, Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music,
gymnastics and philosophy by some of the most distinguished teachers of his era.

Birth and family

The exact time and place of Plato's birth are unknown, but it is certain that he
belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern
scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. His
father was Ariston. According to a disputed tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius,
Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus, and the king of Messenia,
Melanthus. Plato's mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with
the famous Athenian lawmaker and lyric poetSolon. Perictione was sister of Charmides
and niece of Critias, both prominent figures of the Thirty Tyrants, the brief
oligarchicregime, which followed on the collapse of Athens at the end of the
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Peloponnesian War (404403 BCE). Besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had
three other children; these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter
Potone, the mother of Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato as head of his
philosophical Academy). The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the
Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but some have argued they
were uncles. But in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by
presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato.
The traditional date of Plato's birth (428/427) is based on a dubious interpretation
of Diogenes Laertius, who says, "When [Socrates] was gone, [Plato] joined Cratylus the
Heracleitean and Hermogenes, who philosophized in the manner of Parmenides. Then, at
twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, [Plato] went to Euclides in Megara." As Debra Nails
argues, "The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and
implies the very opposite." In his Seventh Letter, Plato notes that his coming of age
coincided with the taking of power by the Thirty, remarking, "But a youth under the age
of twenty made himself a laughingstock if he attempted to enter the political arena."
Thus, Nails dates Plato's birth to 424/423.
According to some accounts, Ariston tried to force his attentions on Perictione,
but failed in his purpose; then the godApollo appeared to him in a vision, and as a result,
Ariston left Perictione unmolested. Another legend related that, when Plato was an infant,
bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping: an augury of the sweetness of style in
which he would discourse about philosophy.
Ariston appears to have died in Plato's childhood, although the precise dating of
his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mother's brother, who had
served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, the
leader of the democratic faction in Athens. Pyrilampes had a son from a previous
marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes'
second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato, who appears in Parmenides.

In contrast to reticence about himself, Plato often introduced his distinguished

relatives into his dialogues, or referred to them with some precision: Charmides has a
dialogue named after him; Critias speaks in both Charmides and Protagoras; and
Adeimantus and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic. These and other
references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct
Plato's family tree. According to Burnet, "the opening scene of the Charmides is a
glorification of the whole [family] connection ... Plato's dialogues are not only a
memorial to Socrates, but also the happier days of his own family."

Name
According to Diogenes Lartius, the philosopher was named Aristocles
() after his grandfather. It was common in Athenian society for boys to be
named after grandfathers (or fathers). But there is only one inscriptional record of an
Aristocles, an early Archon of Athens in 605/4 BCE. There is no record of a line from
Aristocles to Plato's father, Ariston. However, if Plato was not named after an ancestor
named Plato (there is no record of one), then the origin of his renaming as Plato becomes
a conundrum.
The sources of Diogenes account for this fact by claiming that his wrestling
coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him Platon, meaning "broad," on account of his robust
figureor that Plato derived his name from the breadth (, platyts) of his
eloquence, or else because he was very wide (, plats) across the forehead.
Recently a scholar has argued that even the name Aristocles for Plato was a much later
invention. Although Platon was a fairly common name (31 instances are known from
Athens alone), the name does not occur in Plato's known family line. Another scholar,
however, claims that "there is good reason for not dismissing [the idea that Aristocles was
Plato's given name] as a mere invention of his biographers", noting how prevalent that
account is in our sources. The fact that the philosopher in his maturity called himself

Platon is indisputable, but the origin of this naming must remain moot unless the record
is made to yield more information.

Education
Apuleius informs us that Speusippus praised Plato's quickness of mind and
modesty as a boy, and the "first fruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of
study".Plato must have been instructed in grammar, music, and gymnastics by the most
distinguished teachers of his time. Dicaearchus went so far as to say that Plato wrestled at
the Isthmian games. Plato had also attended courses of philosophy; before meeting
Socrates, he first became acquainted with Cratylus (a disciple of Heraclitus, a prominent
pre-Socratic Greek philosopher) and the Heraclitean doctrines. W. A. Borody argues that
an Athenian openness towards a wider range of sexuality may have contributed to the
Athenian philosophers' openness towards a wider range of thought, a cultural situation
Borody describes as "polymorphously discursive."

Later life
Plato may have traveled in Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene, Libya. Said to have
returned to Athens at the age of forty, Plato founded one of the earliest known organized
schools in Western Civilization on a plot of land in the Grove of Hecademus or
Academus. The Academy was a large enclosure of ground about six stadia outside of
Athens proper. One story is that the name of the Academy comes from the ancient hero,
Academus. Another story is that the name came from a supposed a former owner, a
citizen of Athens also named Academus. Yet another account is that it was named after a
member of the army of Castor and Pollux, an Arcadian named

Echedemus. The

Academy operated until it was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 84 BCE.

Neoplatonists revived the Academy in the early 5th century, and it operated until AD 529,
when it was closed by Justinian I of Byzantium, who saw it as a threat to the propagation
5

of Christianity. Many intellectuals were schooled in the Academy, the most prominent
one being Aristotle.
Throughout his later life, Plato became entangled with the politics of the city of Syracuse.
According to Diogenes Laertius, Plato initially visited Syracuse while it was under the rule of
Dionysius. During this first trip Dionysius's brother-in-law, Dion of Syracuse, became one of
Plato's disciples, but the tyrant himself turned against Plato. Plato almost faced death, but he was
sold into slavery. Then Annicerisbought Plato's freedom for twenty minas, and sent him home.
After Dionysius's death, according to Plato's Seventh Letter, Dion requested Plato return to
Syracuse to tutor Dionysius II and guide him to become a philosopher king. Dionysius II seemed
to accept Plato's teachings, but he became suspicious of Dion, his uncle. Dionysius expelled Dion
and kept Plato against his will. Eventually Plato left Syracuse. Dion would return to overthrow
Dionysius and ruled Syracuse for a short time before being usurped by Calippus, a fellow disciple
of Plato.

Death
A variety of sources have given accounts of Plato's death. One story, based on a mutilated
manuscript, suggests Plato died in his bed, whilst a young Thracian girl played the flute
to him. Another tradition suggests Plato died at a wedding feast. The account is based on
Diogenes Laertius's reference to an account by Hermippus, a third-century Alexandrian.
According to Tertullian, Plato simply died in his sleep.

Philosophy
Recurrent themes
Plato often discusses the father-son relationship and the question of whether a
father's interest in his sons has much to do with how well his sons turn out. In ancient
Athens, a boy was socially located by his family identity, and Plato often refers to his
characters in terms of their paternal and fraternal relationships. Socrates was not a family
man, and saw himself as the son of his mother, who was apparently a midwife. A divine
6

fatalist, Socrates mocks men who spent exorbitant fees on tutors and trainers for their
sons, and repeatedly ventures the idea that good character is a gift from the gods. Crito
reminds Socrates that orphans are at the mercy of chance, but Socrates is unconcerned. In
the Theaetetus, he is found recruiting as a disciple a young man whose inheritance has
been squandered. Socrates twice compares the relationship of the older man and his boy
lover to the father-son relationship (Lysis 213a, Republic 3.403b), and in the Phaedo,
Socrates' disciples, towards whom he displays more concern than his biological sons, say
they will feel "fatherless" when he is gone.
In several of Plato's dialogues, Socrates promulgates the idea that knowledge is a
matter of recollection, and not of learning, observation, or study.[54] He maintains this
view somewhat at his own expense, because in many dialogues, Socrates complains of
his forgetfulness. Socrates is often found arguing that knowledge is not empirical, and
that it comes from divine insight. In many middle period dialogues, such as the Phaedo,
Republic and Phaedrus Plato advocates a belief in the immortality of the soul, and
several dialogues end with long speeches imagining the afterlife. More than one dialogue
contrasts knowledge and opinion, perception and reality, nature and custom, and body
and soul.
Several dialogues tackle questions about art: Socrates says that poetry is inspired
by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of
divine madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus (265ac), and
yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well. In Ion,
Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he expresses in the Republic. The
dialogue Ion suggests that Homer's Iliad functioned in the ancient Greek world as the
Bible does today in the modern Christian world: as divinely inspired literature that can
provide moral guidance, if only it can be properly interpreted.
Socrates and his company of disputants had something to say on many subjects,
including politics and art, religion and science, justice and medicine, virtue and vice,
crime and punishment, pleasure and pain, rhetoric and rhapsody, human nature and
sexuality, as well as love and wisdom.
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Metaphysics
"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences
of denying, as Plato's Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several
dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about
what is knowable and what is real. While most people take the objects of their senses to
be real if anything is, Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to
be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are
euamousoi (), an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses"
(Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that
gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.
Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what
puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he
who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of
the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the
cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the
invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton")
is the least knowable, and the most obscure.
Socrates says in the Republic that people who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be
good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance. Socrates admits that few
climb out of the den, or cave of ignorance, and those who do, not only have a terrible
struggle to attain the heights, but when they go back down for a visit or to help other
people up, they find themselves objects of scorn and ridicule.
According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of
their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect
versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena
produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused
by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example,
Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial
would be a cheap copy of it.
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The allegory of the cave (often said by scholars to represent Plato's own
epistemology and metaphysics) is intimately connected to his political ideology (often
said to also be Plato's own), that only people who have climbed out of the cave and cast
their eyes on a vision of goodness are fit to rule. Socrates claims that the enlightened men
of society must be forced from their divine contemplations and be compelled to run the
city according to their lofty insights. Thus is born the idea of the "philosopher-king", the
wise person who accepts the power thrust upon him by the people who are wise enough
to choose a good master. This is the main thesis of Socrates in the Republic, that the most
wisdom the masses can muster is the wise choice of a ruler.

Theory of Forms
The theory of Forms (or theory of Ideas) typically refers to the belief that the
material world as it seems to us is not the real world, but only an "image" or "copy" of
the real world. In some of Plato's dialogues, this is expressed by Socrates, who spoke of
forms in formulating a solution to the problem of universals. The forms, according to
Socrates, are archetypes or abstract representations of the many types of things, and
properties we feel and see around us, that can only be perceived by reason (Greek:
). (That is, they are universals.) In other words, Socrates was able to recognize two
worlds: the apparent world, which constantly changes, and an unchanging and unseen
world of forms, which may be the cause of what is apparent.

Epistemology
Many have interpreted Plato as statingeven having been the first to writethat
knowledge is justified true belief, an influential view that informed future developments
in epistemology. This interpretation is partly based on a reading of the Theaetetus
wherein Plato argues that knowledge is distinguished from mere true belief by the knower
having an "account" of the object of her or his true belief (Theaetetus201cd). And this
theory may again be seen in the Meno, where it is suggested that true belief can be raised
to the level of knowledge if it is bound with an account as to the question of "why" the
object of the true belief is so (Meno97d98a). Many years later, Edmund Gettier
famously demonstrated the problems of the justified true belief account of knowledge.
That the modern theory of justified true belief as knowledge which Gettier addresses is
9

equivalent to Plato's is accepted by some scholars but rejected by others. Plato himself
also identified problems with the justified true belief definition in the Theaetetus,
concluding that justification (or an "account") would require knowledge of differentness,
meaning that the definition of knowledge is circular (Theaetetus210ab).
Later in the Meno, Socrates uses a geometrical example to expound Plato's view
that knowledge in this latter sense is acquired by recollection. Socrates elicits a fact
concerning a geometrical construction from a slave boy, who could not have otherwise
known the fact (due to the slave boy's lack of education). The knowledge must be
present, Socrates concludes, in an eternal, non-experiential form.
In other dialogues, the Sophist, Statesman, Republic, and the Parmenides, Plato
himself associates knowledge with the apprehension of unchanging Forms and their
relationships to one another (which he calls "expertise" in Dialectic), including through
the processes of collection and division. More explicitly, Plato himself argues in the
Timaeus that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In
other words, if one derives one's account of something experientially, because the world
of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are
characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives one's
account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because these forms are
unchanging, so too is the account derived from them. That apprehension of forms is
required for knowledge may be taken to cohere with Plato's theory in the Theaetetus and
Meno. Indeed, the apprehension of Forms may be at the base of the "account" required
for justification, in that it offers foundational knowledge which itself needs no account,
thereby avoiding an infinite regression.

The state

10

PapirusOxyrhynchus, with fragment of Plato's Republic

Plato's philosophical views had many societal implications, especially on the idea of an
ideal state or government. There is some discrepancy between his early and later views.
Some of the most famous doctrines are contained in the Republic during his middle
period, as well as in the Laws and the Statesman. However, because Plato wrote
dialogues, it is assumed that Socrates is often speaking for Plato. This assumption may
not be true in all cases.
Plato, through the words of Socrates, asserts that societies have a tripartite class structure
corresponding to the appetite/spirit/reason structure of the individual soul. The
appetite/spirit/reason are analogous to the castes of society.

Productive (Workers) the labourers, carpenters, plumbers, masons, merchants,

farmers, ranchers, etc. These correspond to the "appetite" part of the soul.

Protective (Warriors or Guardians) those who are adventurous, strong and

brave; in the armed forces. These correspond to the "spirit" part of the soul.

Governing (Rulers or Philosopher Kings) those who are intelligent, rational,

self-controlled, in love with wisdom, well suited to make decisions for the
community. These correspond to the "reason" part of the soul and are very few.

In the Timaeus, Plato locates the parts of the soul within the human body: Reason is
located in the head, spirit in the top third of the torso, and the appetite in the middle third
of the torso, down to the navel.

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According to this model, the principles of Athenian democracy (as it existed in his
day) are rejected as only a few are fit to rule. Instead of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato
says reason and wisdom should govern. As Plato puts it:
"Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men
genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy
entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively
are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think,
will the human race." (Republic 473c-d)

Plato in his academy, drawing after a painting by Swedish painter Carl Johan
Wahlbom
Plato describes these "philosopher kings" as "those who love the sight of truth" (Republic
475c) and supports the idea with the analogy of a captain and his ship or a doctor and his
medicine. According to him, sailing and health are not things that everyone is qualified to
practice by nature. A large part of the Republic then addresses how the educational
system should be set up to produce these philosopher kings.
However, it must be taken into account that the ideal city outlined in the Republic
is qualified by Socrates as the ideal luxurious city, examined to determine how it is that
injustice and justice grow in a city (Republic 372e). According to Socrates, the "true" and
"healthy" city is instead the one first outlined in book II of the Republic, 369c372d,
containing farmers, craftsmen, merchants, and wage-earners, but lacking the guardian
class of philosopher-kings as well as delicacies such as "perfumed oils, incense,
prostitutes, and pastries", in addition to paintings, gold, ivory, couches, a multitude of
occupations such as poets and hunters, and war.
In addition, the ideal city is used as an image to illuminate the state of one's soul, or the
will, reason, and desires combined in the human body. Socrates is attempting to make an
12

image of a rightly ordered human, and then later goes on to describe the different kinds of
humans that can be observed, from tyrants to lovers of money in various kinds of cities.
The ideal city is not promoted, but only used to magnify the different kinds of individual
humans and the state of their soul. However, the philosopher king image was used by
many after Plato to justify their personal political beliefs. The philosophic soul according
to Socrates has reason, will, and desires united in virtuous harmony. A philosopher has
the moderate love for wisdom and the courage to act according to wisdom. Wisdom is
knowledge about the Good or the right relations between all that exists.
Wherein it concerns states and rulers, Plato has made interesting arguments. For instance
he asks which is bettera bad democracy or a country reigned by a tyrant. He argues that
it is better to be ruled by a bad tyrant, than be a bad democracy (since here all the people
are now responsible for such actions, rather than one individual committing many bad
deeds.) This is emphasised within the Republic as Plato describes the event of mutiny on
board a ship. Plato suggests the ship's crew to be in line with the democratic rule of many
and the captain, although inhibited through ailments, the tyrant. Plato's description of this
event is parallel to that of democracy within the state and the inherent problems that arise.
According to Plato, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from
an aristocracy (rule by the best) to a timocracy (rule by the honorable), then to an
oligarchy (rule by the few), then to a democracy (rule by the people), and finally to
tyranny (rule by one person, rule by a tyrant). Aristocracy is the form of government
(politeia) advocated in Plato's Republic. This regime is ruled by a philosopher king, and
thus is grounded on wisdom and reason. The aristocratic state, and the man whose nature
corresponds to it, are the objects of Plato's analyses throughout much of the Republic, as
opposed to the other four types of states/men, who are discussed later in his work. In
Book VIII, Plato states in order the other four imperfect societies with a description of the
state's structure and individual character. In timocracy the ruling class is made up
primarily of those with a warrior-like character. In his description, Plato has Sparta in
mind. Oligarchy is made up of a society in which wealth is the criterion of merit and the
wealthy are in control. In democracy, the state bears resemblance to ancient Athens with
traits such as equality of political opportunity and freedom for the individual to do as he
likes. Democracy then degenerates into tyranny from the conflict of rich and poor. It is
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characterized by an undisciplined society existing in chaos, where the tyrant rises as

popular champion leading to the formation of his private army and the growth of
oppression.

Aristotle
Chalcidice (Chalkidiki),

Born

Nationality

Northern Greece
322 BC (aged 62)
Euboea, Greece
Greek

Era

Ancient philosophy

Died

Life

School of Aristotle in Mieza, Macedonia, Greece

Aristotle, whose name means "the best purpose", was born in 384 BC in Stagira,
Chalcidice, about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki. His father
Nicomachus was the personal physician to King Amyntas of Macedon. Although there is
little information on Aristotle's childhood, he probably spent some time within the
Macedonian palace, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy.

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At about the age of eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education
at Plato's Academy. He remained there for nearly twenty years before leaving Athens in
348/47 BC. The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed
with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although
it is possible that he feared anti-Macedonian sentiments and left before Plato died.

"Aristotle" by Francesco Hayez (17911882)

Aristotle then accompanied Xenocrates to the court of his friend Hermias of Atarneus in
Asia Minor. There, he traveled with Theophrastus to the island of Lesbos, where together they
researched the botany and zoology of the island. Aristotle married Pythias, either Hermias's
adoptive daughter or niece. She bore him a daughter, whom they also named Pythias. Soon after
Hermias' death, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor to his son
Alexander in 343 BC.
Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time
he gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander.
Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest and his attitude towards Persia was
unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the
Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and
to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants".
By 335 BC, Artistotle had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as
the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens,
his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira, who bore him a

15

son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus. According to the Suda, he also had an
eromenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.
This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have
composed many of his works. He wrote many dialogues of which only fragments have survived.
Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for
widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most
important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On
the Soul) and Poetics.
Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant
contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy,
embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on
aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and
theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works
constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge.
Near the end of his life, Alexander and Aristotle became estranged over Alexander's
relationship with Persia and Persians. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of
playing a role in Alexander's death, but there is little evidence.
Following Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In
322 BC, Eurymedon the Hierophant denounced Aristotle for not holding the gods in honor,
prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, explaining: "I will not allow the
Athenians to sin twice against philosophy" a reference to Athens's prior trial and execution of
Socrates. He died in Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his student
Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife.
Charles Walston argues that the tomb of Aristotle is located on the sacred way between
Chalcis and Eretria and to have contained two styluses, a pen, a signet-ring and some terra-cottas
as well as what is supposed to be the earthly remains of Aristotle in the form of some skull
fragments.
In general, the details of the life of Aristotle are not well-established. The biographies of
Aristotle written in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient
points.

Logic

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Aristotle portrayed in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle as a scholar of the 15th

century AD.

With the Prior Analytics, Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal
logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century
advances in mathematical logic. Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that
Aristotle's theory of logic completely accounted for the core of deductive inference.

History
Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier
date to speak of'". However, Plato reports that syntax was devised before him, by
Prodicus of Ceos, who was concerned by the correct use of words. Logic seems to have
emerged from dialectics; the earlier philosophers made frequent use of concepts like
reductio ad absurdum in their discussions, but never truly understood the logical
implications. Even Plato had difficulties with logic; although he had a reasonable
conception of a deductive system, he could never actually construct one, thus he relied
instead on his dialectic.
Plato believed that deduction would simply follow from premises, hence he
focused on maintaining solid premises so that the conclusion would logically follow.
Consequently, Plato realized that a method for obtaining conclusions would be most
beneficial. He never succeeded in devising such a method, but his best attempt was
published in his book Sophist, where he introduced his division method.

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Aristotle's epistemology

Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by
Raphael. Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge
through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his
Nicomachean Ethics in his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens,
representing his belief in The Forms, while holding a copy of Timaeus

Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle's
ontology, however, finds the universal in particular things, which he calls the essence of
things, while in Plato's ontology, the universal exists apart from particular things, and is
related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, epistemology is
based on the study of particular phenomena and rises to the knowledge of essences, while
for Plato epistemology begins with knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) and
descends to knowledge of particular imitations of these. For Aristotle, "form" still refers
to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance
(see Universals and particulars, below). In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both
inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles.
In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy
examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be
regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope
of philosophy has become limited to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and
metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role. Today's philosophy tends to exclude
18

empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast,
Aristotle's philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual
inquiry.
In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with
reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". Note, however, that his use of the
term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific
method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical"
(Metaphysics 1025b25). By practical science, he means ethics and politics; by poetical
science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he
means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.
If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of
Aristotelian philosophy would consist of: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including
Metaphysics, Physics and Mathematics; (3) Practical Philosophy and (4) Poetical
Philosophy.
In the period between his two stays in Athens, between his times at the Academy and the
Lyceum, Aristotle conducted most of the scientific thinking and research for which he is
renowned today. In fact, most of Aristotle's life was devoted to the study of the objects of
natural science. Aristotle's metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers
but he made no original contributions to mathematics. He did, however, perform original
research in the natural sciences, e.g., botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry,
meteorology, and several other sciences.
Aristotle's writings on science are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative.
Beginning in the 16th century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical
sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate. His failings
were largely due to the absence of concepts like mass, velocity, force and temperature. He
had a conception of speed and temperature, but no quantitative understanding of them,
which was partly due to the absence of basic experimental devices, like clocks and
thermometers.
19

His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, a mixture of

precocious accuracy and curious errors. For example, in his History of Animals he
claimed that human males have more teeth than females. In a similar vein, John
Philoponus, and later Galileo, showed by simple experiments that Aristotle's theory that a
heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect. On the other hand, Aristotle
refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are
shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out (correctly, even if such reasoning
was bound to be dismissed for a long time) that, given "current astronomical
demonstrations" that "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance
of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then ... the sun shines
on all the stars and the earth screens none of them."
In places, Aristotle goes too far in deriving 'laws of the universe' from simple
observation and over-stretched reason. Today's scientific method assumes that such
thinking without sufficient facts is ineffective, and that discerning the validity of one's
hypothesis requires far more rigorous experimentation than that which Aristotle used to
support his laws.
Aristotle also had some scientific blind spots. He posited a geocentric cosmology that we
may discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the
16th century. From the 3rd century to the 16th century, the dominant view held that the
Earth was the rotational center of the universe.
Because he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers
during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions
as given, which held back science in this epoch. However, Aristotle's scientific
shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the many
scientific fields. For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created
foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia. Moreover, he
introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that
studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.

20

Physics

Five elements
Aristotle proposed a fifth element, aether, in addition to the four proposed earlier by
Empedocles.

Earth, which is cold and dry; this corresponds to the modern idea of a solid.

Water, which is cold and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a liquid.

Air, which is hot and wet; this corresponds to the modern idea of a gas.

Fire, which is hot and dry; this corresponds to the modern ideas of plasma and
heat.

Aether, which is the divine substance that makes up the heavenly spheres and
heavenly bodies (stars and planets).
Each of the four earthly elements has its natural place. All that is earthly tends

toward the center of the universe, i.e., the center of the Earth. Water tends toward a
sphere surrounding the center. Air tends toward a sphere surrounding the water sphere.
Fire tends toward the lunar sphere (in which the Moon orbits). When elements are moved
out of their natural place, they naturally move back towards it. This is "natural motion"
motion requiring no extrinsic cause. So, for example, in water, earthy bodies sink while
air bubbles rise up; in air, rain falls and flame rises. Outside all the other spheres, the
heavenly, fifth element, manifested in the stars and planets, moves in the perfection of
circles.

21

Motion
Aristotle defined motion as the actuality of a potentiality as such. Aquinas
suggested that the passage be understood literally; that motion can indeed be understood
as the active fulfillment of a potential, as a transition toward a potentially possible state.
Because actuality and potentiality are normally opposites in Aristotle, other
commentators either suggest that the wording which has come down to us is erroneous,
or that the addition of the "as such" to the definition is critical to understanding it.

Causality, the four causes

Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to
four different types of simultaneously active causal factors:

Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus
the material cause of a table is wood, and the material cause of a car is rubber and
steel. It is not about action. It does not mean one domino knocks over another
domino.

The formal cause is its form, i.e., the arrangement of that matter. It tells us what a
thing is, that anything is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence,
whole, synthesis or archetype. It embraces the account of causes in terms of
fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (i.e., macrostructure) is the
cause of its parts, a relationship known as the whole-part causation. Plainly put,
the formal cause is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of
the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in
the matter. Formal cause could only refer to the essential quality of causation. A
simple example of the formal cause is the mental image or idea that allows an
artist, architect, or engineer to create his drawings.

22

The efficient cause is "the primary source", or that from which the change under
consideration proceeds. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes
change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living,
acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current
understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the
modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or
states of affairs. So, take the two dominoes, this time of equal weighting, the first
is knocked over causing the second also to fall over.

The final cause is its purpose, or that for the sake of which a thing exists or is
done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. The final
cause or teleos is the purpose or function that something is supposed to serve.
This covers modern ideas of motivating causes, such as volition, need, desire,
ethics, or spiritual beliefs.
Additionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally,

as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the
one is as the beginning of change, the other as the goal. (Thus Aristotle first suggested a
reciprocal or circular causality as a relation of mutual dependence or influence of cause
upon effect). Moreover, Aristotle indicated that the same thing can be the cause of
contrary effects; its presence and absence may result in different outcomes. Simply it is
the goal or purpose that brings about an event. Our two dominoes require someone or
something to intentionally knock over the first domino, because it cannot fall of its own
accord.
Aristotle marked two modes of causation: proper (prior) causation and accidental
(chance) causation. All causes, proper and incidental, can be spoken as potential or as
actual, particular or generic. The same language refers to the effects of causes, so that
generic effects assigned to generic causes, particular effects to particular causes,
operating causes to actual effects. Essentially, causality does not suggest a temporal
relation between the cause and the effect.

23

Chance and spontaneity

According to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of some things,
distinguishable from other types of cause. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm
of accidental things. It is "from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous
does not come from chance). For a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of
"chance" it might be better to think of "coincidence": Something takes place by chance if
a person sets out with the intent of having one thing take place, but with the result of
another thing (not intended) taking place.
For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person
willing to donate a substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the
person donating, not for the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose,
Aristotle would call the collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of
chance. It must be unusual that something happens by chance. In other words, if
something happens all or most of the time, we cannot say that it is by chance.
There is also more specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that can
only apply to human beings, because it is in the sphere of moral actions. According to
Aristotle, luck must involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable
of deliberation and choice. "What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance".

Psychology
Aristotle's psychology, given in his treatise On the Soul (peri psyche, often known
by its Latin title De Anima), posits three kinds of soul ("psyches"): the vegetative soul,
the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Humans have a rational soul. This kind of soul is
capable of the same powers as the other kinds: Like the vegetative soul it can grow and
nourish itself; like the sensitive soul it can experience sensations and move locally. The
24

unique part of the human, rational soul is its ability to receive forms of other things and
compare them.
For Aristotle, the soul (psyche) was a simpler concept than it is for us today. By
soul he simply meant the form of a living being. Because all beings are composites of
form and matter, the form of living beings is that which endows them with what is
specific to living beings, e.g. the ability to initiate movement (or in the case of plants,
growth and chemical transformations, which Aristotle considers types of movement).

Memory
According to Aristotle, memory is the ability to hold a perceived experience in
your mind and to have the ability to distinguish between the internal "appearance" and an
occurrence in the past. In other words, a memory is a mental picture (phantasm) in which
Aristotle defines in De Anima, as an appearance which is imprinted on the part of the
body that forms a memory. Aristotle believed an "imprint" becomes impressed on a semifluid bodily organ that undergoes several changes in order to make a memory. A memory
occurs when a stimuli is too complex that the nervous system (semi-fluid bodily organ)
cannot receive all the impressions at once. These changes are the same as those involved
in the operations of sensation, common sense, and thinking . The mental picture
imprinted on the bodily organ is the final product of the entire process of sense
perception. It does not matter if the experience was seen or heard, every experience ends
up as a mental image in memory.
Aristotle uses the word "memory" for two basic abilities. First, the actual
retaining of the experience in the mnemonic "imprint" that can develop from sensation.
Second, the intellectual anxiety that comes with the "imprint" due to being impressed at a
particular time and processing specific contents. These abilities can be explained as
memory is neither sensation nor thinking because is arises only after a lapse of time.
Therefore, memory is of the past, prediction is of the future, and sensation is of the
present. The retrieval of our "imprints" cannot be performed suddenly. A transitional
25

channel is needed and located in our past experiences, both for our previous experience
and present experience.
Aristotle proposed that slow-witted people have good memory because the fluids
in their brain do not wash away their memory organ used to imprint experiences and so
the "imprint" can easily continue. However, they cannot be too slow or the hardened
surface of the organ will not receive new "imprints". He believed the young and the old
do not properly develop an "imprint". Young people undergo rapid changes as they
develop, while the elderly's organs are beginning to decay, thus stunting new "imprints".
Likewise, people who are too quick-witted are similar to the young and the image cannot
be fixed because of the rapid changes of their organ. Because intellectual functions are
not involved in memory, memories belong to some animals too, but only those in which
have perception of time.

Recollection
Because Aristotle believes people receive all kinds of sense perceptions and
people perceive them as images or "imprints", people are continually weaving together
new "imprints" of things they experience. In order to search for these "imprints", people
search the memory itself. Within the memory, if one experience is offered instead of a
specific memory, that person will reject this experience until they find what they are
looking for. Recollection occurs when one experience naturally follows another. If the
chain of "images" is needed, one memory will stimulate the other. If the chain of
"images" is not needed, but expected, then it will only stimulate the other memory in
most instances. When people recall experiences, they stimulate certain previous
experiences until they have stimulated the one that was needed.
Recollection is the self-directed activity of retrieving the information stored in a
memory "imprint" after some time has passed. Retrieval of stored information is
dependent on the scope of mnemonic capabilities of a being (human or animal) and the
26

abilities the human or animal possesses. Only humans will remember "imprints" of
intellectual activity, such as numbers and words. Animals that have perception of time
will be able to retrieve memories of their past observations. Remembering involves only
perception of the things remembered and of the time passed. Recollection of an "imprint"
is when the present experiences a person remembers are similar with elements
corresponding in character and arrangement of past sensory experiences. When an
"imprint" is recalled, it may bring forth a large group of related "imprints".
Aristotle believed the chain of thought, which ends in recollection of certain
"imprints", was connected systematically in three sorts of relationships: similarity,
contrast, and contiguity. These three laws make up his Laws of Association. Aristotle
believed that past experiences are hidden within our mind. A force operates to awaken the
hidden material to bring up the actual experience. According to Aristotle, association is
the power innate in a mental state, which operates upon the unexpressed remains of
former

experiences,

allowing

them

to

rise

and

be

recalled.

Ethics
Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical rather than theoretical study, i.e., one
aimed at becoming good and doing good rather than knowing for its own sake. He wrote
several treatises on ethics, including most notably, the Nicomachean Ethics.
Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function (ergon) of a thing.
An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye
is sight. Aristotle reasoned that humans must have a function specific to humans, and that
this function must be an activity of the psuch (normally translated as soul) in accordance
with reason (logos). Aristotle identified such an optimum activity of the soul as the aim of
all human deliberate action, eudaimonia, generally translated as "happiness" or
sometimes "well-being". To have the potential of ever being happy in this way
necessarily requires a good character (thik aret), often translated as moral (or ethical)
virtue (or excellence).
27

Aristotle taught that to achieve a virtuous and potentially happy character requires
a first stage of having the fortune to be habituated not deliberately, but by teachers, and
experience, leading to a later stage in which one consciously chooses to do the best
things. When the best people come to live life this way their practical wisdom (phronesis)
and their intellect (nous) can develop with each other towards the highest possible human
virtue, the wisdom of an accomplished theoretical or speculative thinker, or in other
words, a philosopher.

Politics
In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle
addressed the city in his work titled Politics. Aristotle considered the city to be a natural
community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior in importance to the family
which in turn is prior to the individual, "for the whole must of necessity be prior to the
part".He also famously stated that "man is by nature a political animal" and also arguing
that humanity's defining factor among others in the animal kingdom is its rationality.
Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and
as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others. Aristotle's conception
of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this
manner.
The common modern understanding of a political community as a modern state is
quite different from Aristotle's understanding. Although he was aware of the existence
and potential of larger empires, the natural community according to Aristotle was the city
(polis) which functions as a political "community" or "partnership" (koinnia). The aim
of the city is not just to avoid injustice or for economic stability, but rather to allow at
least some citizens the possibility to live a good life, and to perform beautiful acts: "The
political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions,
not for the sake of living together." This is distinguished from modern approaches,

28

beginning with social contract theory, according to which individuals leave the state of
nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences."
Excerpt

from

Born

speech by the character

'Aristotle' in the book Died
Nationality
Era

5 May 1818
Trier, Kingdom of Prussia, German
Confederation
14 March 1883 (aged 64)
London, England
German/stateless
19th-century philosophy

Protrepticus (Hutchinson and Johnson, 2015 p. 22)

For we all agree that the most excellent
man should rule, i.e., the supreme by
nature, and that the law rules and
alone is authoritative; but the law is a
kind of intelligence, i.e. a discourse
based on intelligence. And again, what
standard do we have, what criterion of
good things, that is more precise than
the intelligent man? For all that this
man will choose, if the choice is based on his knowledge, are
good things and their contraries are bad. And since everybody
chooses most of all what conforms to their own proper
dispositions (a just man choosing to live justly, a man with
bravery to live bravely, likewise a self-controlled man to live
with self-control), it is clear that the intelligent man will
choose most of all to be intelligent; for this is the function of
that capacity. Hence it's evident that, according to the most
authoritative judgment, intelligence is supreme among goods.

Karl Marx

29

Early life
Childhood and early education: 18181835
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and Henrietta Pressburg
(17881863). He was born at 664 Brckergasse in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom
of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. Ancestrally Jewish, his maternal grandfather
was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role
taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. Karl's father, as a child known as Herschel,
was the first in the line to receive a secular education; he became a lawyer and lived a
relatively wealthy and middle-class existence, with his family owning a number of
Moselle vineyards. Prior to his son's birth, and to escape the constraints of anti-semitic
legislation, Herschel converted from Judaism to Lutheranism, the main Protestant
denomination in Germany and Prussia at the time, taking on the German forename of
Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.

Marx's birthplace in Trier. It was purchased by the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1928
and now houses a museum devoted to him.

Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the

ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in
agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed by an absolute
monarchy. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney, in 1819 moving his family
to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra. His wife, a Dutch Jewish woman, Henrietta
Pressburg, was semi-literate and was said to suffer from "excessive mother love",
devoting much time to her family and insisting on cleanliness within her home. She was
from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics:
she was great-aunt to Anton and Gerard Philips, and great-great-aunt to Frits Philips. Her
sister Sophie Presburg (17971854), was Marx's aunt and was married to Lion Philips
30

(17941866) Marx's uncle through this marriage, and was the grandfather of both Gerald
and Anton Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and
industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans
while they were exiled in London. In contrast to her husband, Henrietta retained her
Jewish faith.
Little is known of Karl Marx's childhood. The third of nine children, he became
the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Karl was baptised into the
Lutheran Church in August 1824. His surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette,
Louise, Emilie and Karoline, were also baptised as Lutherans. Young Karl was privately
educated, by Heinrich Marx, until 1830, when he entered Trier High School, whose
headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal
humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative
government. Subsequently, police raided the school in 1832, and discovered that
literature espousing political liberalism was being distributed among the students.
Considering the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted
reforms and replaced several staff during Marx's attendance.
In October 1835 at the age of 17, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn
wishing to study philosophy and literature; however, his father insisted on law as a more
practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Karl was excused from
military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets'
Club, a group containing political radicals that was being monitored by the police. Marx
also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (Landsmannschaft der Treveraner), at
one point serving as club co-president. Additionally, Marx was involved in certain
disputes, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a
member of the university's Borussian Korps. Although his grades in the first term were
good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious and
academic University of Berlin.

31

Hegelianism and early activism: 18361843

Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his
studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated baroness
of the Prussian ruling class who had known Marx since childhood. Having broken off her
engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially
controversial due to the differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx
befriended her father, a liberal aristocrat, Ludwig von Westphalen, and later dedicated his
doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, Marx
married Jenny in a Protestant church in Kreuznach.
In October 1836 Marx arrived in Berlin, matriculating in the university's faculty
of law and renting a room in the Mittelstrasse. Although studying law, he was fascinated
by philosophy, and looked for a way to combine the two, believing that "without
philosophy nothing could be accomplished". Marx became interested in the recently
deceased German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whose ideas were then widely debated
among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the
Doctor's Club (Doktorklub), a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through
them became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in
1837; they gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, with Marx developing a
particularly close friendship with Adolf Rutenberg. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were
critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions, but adopted his dialectical method in order
to criticise established society, politics, and religion from a leftist perspective. Marx's
father died in May 1838, resulting in a diminished income for the family. Marx had been
emotionally close to his father, and treasured his memory after his death.

32

Jenny von Westphalen in the 1830s

By 1837, Marx was writing both fiction and non-fiction, having completed a short
novel, Scorpion and Felix, a drama, Oulanem, and a number of love poems dedicated to
Jenny von Westphalen, though none of this early work was published during his lifetime.
Marx soon abandoned fiction for other pursuits, including the study of both English and
Italian, art history and the translation of Latin classics. He began co-operating with Bruno
Bauer on editing Hegel's Philosophy of Religion in 1840. Marx was also engaged in
writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean
Philosophy of Nature, which he completed in 1841. It was described as "a daring and
original piece of work in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the
superior wisdom of philosophy": the essay was controversial, particularly among the
conservative professors at the University of Berlin. Marx decided, instead, to submit his
thesis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his PhD in April
1841. As Marx and Bauer were both atheists, in March 1841 they began plans for a
journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), but it never came to fruition.
In July, Marx and Bauer took a trip to Bonn from Berlin. There they scandalised their
class by getting drunk, laughing in church, and galloping through the streets on donkeys.
Marx was considering an academic career, but this path was barred by the
government's growing opposition to classical liberalism and the Young Hegelians. Marx
moved to Cologne in 1842, where he became a journalist, writing for the radical
newspaper Rheinische Zeitung ("Rhineland News"), expressing his early views on
socialism and his developing interest in economics. He criticised both right-wing
European governments as well as figures in the liberal and socialist movements whom he
thought ineffective or counter-productive. The newspaper attracted the attention of the
Prussian government censors, who checked every issue for seditious material before
printing; Marx lamented that "Our newspaper has to be presented to the police to be
sniffed at, and if the police nose smells anything un-Christian or un-Prussian, the
newspaper is not allowed to appear. After the Rheinische Zeitung published an article
strongly criticising the Russian monarchy, Tsar Nicholas I requested it be banned;
Prussia's government complied in 1843.
33

Communist agitation
Paris: 18431845
In 1843, Marx became co-editor of a new, radical leftist Parisian newspaper, the
Deutsch-Franzsische Jahrbcher (German-French Annals), then being set up by the
German socialist Arnold Ruge to bring together German and French radicals, and thus
Marx and his wife moved to Paris in October 1843. Initially living with Ruge and his
wife communally at 23 Rue Vaneau, they found the living conditions difficult, so moved
out following the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1844. Although intended to attract
writers from both France and the German states, the Jahrbcher was dominated by the
latter; the only non-German writer was the exiled Russian anarchist collectivist Mikhail
Bakunin. Marx contributed two essays to the paper, "Introduction to a Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "On the Jewish Question," the latter
introducing his belief that the proletariat were a revolutionary force and marking his
embrace of communism. Only one issue was published, but it was relatively successful,
largely owing to the inclusion of Heinrich Heine's satirical odes on King Ludwig of
Bavaria, leading the German states to ban it and seize imported copies; Ruge nevertheless
refused to fund the publication of further issues, and his friendship with Marx broke
down. After the paper's collapse, Marx began writing for the only uncensored Germanlanguage radical newspaper left, Vorwrts! (Forward!). Based in Paris, the paper was
connected to the League of the Just, a utopian socialist secret society of workers and
artisans. Marx attended some of their meetings, but did not join. In Vorwrts!, Marx
refined his views on socialism based upon Hegelian and Feuerbachian ideas of dialectical
materialism, at the same time criticising liberals and other socialists operating in Europe.

34

Friedrich Engels, whom Marx met in 1844; they became lifelong friends and
collaborators.

On 28 August 1844, Marx met the German socialist Friedrich Engels at the Caf
de la Rgence, beginning a lifelong friendship. Engels showed Marx his recently
published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, convincing Marx that
the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history.
Soon Marx and Engels were collaborating on a criticism of the philosophical ideas of
Marx's former friend, Bruno Bauer. This work was published in 1845 as The Holy
Family. Although critical of Bauer, Marx was increasingly influenced by the ideas of the
Young Hegelians Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach, but eventually Marx and Engels
abandoned Feuerbachian materialism as well.
During the time that he lived at 38 Rue Vanneau in Paris (from October 1843 until
January 1845), Marx engaged in an intensive study of "political economy" (Adam Smith,
David Ricardo, James Mill etc.), the French socialists (especially Claude Henri St. Simon
and Charles Fourier) and the history of France." The study of political economy is a study
that Marx would pursue for the rest of his life and would result in his major economic
workthe three-volume series called Capital. Marxism is based in large part on three
influences: Hegel's dialectics, French utopian socialism and English economics. Together
with his earlier study of Hegel's dialectics, the studying that Marx did during this time in
Paris meant that all major components of "Marxism" (or political economy as Marx
called it) were in place by the autumn of 1844. Although Marx was constantly being
35

pulled away from his study of political economy by the usual daily demands on his time
that everyone faces, and the additional special demands of editing a radical newspaper
and later by the demands of organizing and directing the efforts of a political party during
years in which popular uprisings of the citizenry might at any moment become a
revolution, Marx was always drawn back to his economic studies. Marx sought "to
understand the inner workings of capitalism."
An outline of "Marxism" had definitely formed in the mind of Karl Marx by late
1844. Indeed, many features of the Marxist view of the world's political economy had
been worked out in great detail. However, Marx needed to write down all of the details of
his economic world view to further clarify the new economic theory in his own mind.
Accordingly, Marx wrote The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. These
manuscripts covered numerous topics, detailing Marx's concept of alienated labour.
However, by the spring of 1845 his continued study of political economy, capital and
capitalism had led Marx to the belief that the new political economic theory that he was
espousingscientific socialismneeded to be built on the base of a thoroughly
developed materialistic view of the world.
The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 had been written between
April and August 1844. Soon, though, Marx recognised that the Manuscripts had been
influenced by some inconsistent ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. Accordingly, Marx
recognised the need to break with Feuerbach's philosophy in favour of historical
materialism. Thus, a year later, in April 1845, after moving from Paris to Brussels, Marx
wrote his eleven Theses on Feuerbach, The Theses on Feuerbach are best known for
Thesis 11, which states that "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways, the point is to change it". This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for
being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory) overall, criticising
philosophy for putting abstract reality above the physical world. It thus introduced the
first glimpse at Marx's historical materialism, an argument that the world is changed not
by ideas but by actual, physical, material activity and practice. In 1845, after receiving a
request from the Prussian king, the French government shut down Vorwrts!, with the
interior minister, Franois Guizot, expelling Marx from France. At this point, Marx
36

moved from Paris to Brussels, where Marx hoped to, once again, continue his study of
capitalism and political economy.

Brussels: 18451847

The first edition of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in German in 1848

Unable either to stay in France or to move to Germany, Marx decided to emigrate

to Brussels in Belgium in February 1845. However, to stay in Belgium, Marx had to
pledge not to publish anything on the subject of contemporary politics. In Brussels, he
associated with other exiled socialists from across Europe, including Moses Hess, Karl
Heinzen, and Joseph Weydemeyer, and soon, in April 1845, Engels moved from Barmen
in Germany to Brussels to join Marx and the growing cadre of members of the League of
the Just now seeking home in Brussels. Later, Mary Burns, Engels' long-time companion,
left Manchester, England, to join Engels in Brussels.
In mid-July 1845, Marx and Engels left Brussels for England to visit the leaders
of the Chartists, a socialist movement in Britain. This was Marx's first trip to England and
Engels was an ideal guide for the trip. Engels had already spent two years living in
Manchester, from November 1842 to August 1844. Not only did Engels already know the
English language, he had developed a close relationship with many Chartist leaders.
Indeed, Engels was serving as a reporter for many Chartist and socialist English

37

newspapers. Marx used the trip as an opportunity to examine the economic resources
available for study in various libraries in London and Manchester.
In collaboration with Engels, Marx also set about writing a book which is often
seen as his best treatment of the concept of historical materialism, The German Ideology.
In this work, Marx broke with Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and the rest
of the Young Hegelians, and also broke with Karl Grun and other "true socialists" whose
philosophies were still based in part on "idealism." In German Ideology Marx and Engels
finally completed their philosophy, which was based solely on materialism as the sole
motor force in history.
German Ideology is written in a humorously satirical form. But even this satirical
form did not save the work from censorship. Like so many other early writings of his,
German Ideology would not be published in Marx's lifetime and would be published only
in 1932.
After completing German Ideology, Marx turned to a work that was intended to
clarify his own position regarding "the theory and tactics" of a truly "revolutionary
proletarian movement" operating from the standpoint of a truly "scientific materialist"
philosophy. This work was intended to draw a distinction between the utopian socialists
and Marx's own scientific socialist philosophy. Whereas the utopians believed that people
must be persuaded one person at a time to join the socialist movement, the way a person
must be persuaded to adopt any different belief, Marx knew that people would tend on
most occasions to act in accordance with their own economic interests. Thus, appealing to
an entire class (the working class in this case) with a broad appeal to the class's best
material interest would be the best way to mobilize the broad mass of that class to make a
revolution and change society. This was the intent of the new book that Marx was
planning. However, to get the manuscript past the government censors, Marx called the
book The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) and offered it as a response to the "petty
bourgeois philosophy" of the French anarchist socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as
expressed in his book The Philosophy of Poverty (1840).

38

Marx, Engels and Marx's daughters

These books laid the foundation for Marx and Engels's most famous work, a
political pamphlet that has since come to be commonly known as The Communist
Manifesto. While residing in Brussels in 1846, Marx continued his association with the
secret radical organisation League of the Just. As noted above, Marx thought the League
to be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of
Europe toward the mass movement that would bring about a working class revolution.
However, to organise the working class into a mass movement, the League had to cease
its "secret" or "underground" orientation and operate in the open as a political party.
Members of the League eventually became persuaded in this regard. Accordingly, in June
1847 the League of the Just was reorganised by its membership into a new open "above
ground" political society that appealed directly to the working classes. This new open
political society was called the Communist League. Both Marx and Engels participated in
drawing the programme and organisational principles of the new Communist League.
In late 1847, Marx and Engels began writing what was to become their most
famous work a programme of action for the Communist League. Written jointly by
Marx and Engels from December 1847 to January 1848, The Communist Manifesto was
first published on 21 February 1848. The Communist Manifesto laid out the beliefs of the
new Communist League. No longer a secret society, the Communist League wanted to
make aims and intentions clear to the general public rather than hiding its beliefs as the
League of the Just had been doing. The opening lines of the pamphlet set forth the
39

principal basis of Marxism, that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles. It goes on to examine the antagonisms that Marx claimed were arising
in the clashes of interest between the bourgeoisie (the wealthy capitalist class) and the
proletariat (the industrial working class). Proceeding on from this, the Manifesto presents
the argument for why the Communist League, as opposed to other socialist and liberal
political parties and groups at the time, was truly acting in the interests of the proletariat
to overthrow capitalist society and to replace it with socialism.
Later that year, Europe experienced a series of protests, rebellions, and often
violent upheavals that became known as the Revolution of 1848. In France, a revolution
led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the French Second
Republic. Marx was supportive of such activity, and having recently received a
substantial inheritance from his father of either 6,000 or 5,000 francs, allegedly used a
third of it to arm Belgian workers who were planning revolutionary action. Although the
veracity of these allegations is disputed, the Belgian Ministry of Justice accused him of it,
subsequently arresting him, and he was forced to flee back to France, where, with a new
republican government in power, he believed that he would be safe.

Cologne: 18481849
Temporarily settling down in Paris, Marx transferred the Communist League
executive headquarters to the city and also set up a German Workers' Club with various
German socialists living there. Hoping to see the revolution spread to Germany, in 1848
Marx moved back to Cologne where he began issuing a handbill entitled the Demands of
the Communist Party in Germany, in which he argued for only four of the ten points of
the Communist Manifesto, believing that in Germany at that time, the bourgeoisie must
overthrow the feudal monarchy and aristocracy before the proletariat could overthrow the
bourgeoisie. On 1 June, Marx started publication of a daily newspaper, the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung, which he helped to finance through his recent inheritance from his
father. Designed to put forward news from across Europe with his own Marxist
40

interpretation of events, the newspaper featured Marx as a primary writer and the
dominant editorial influence. Despite contributions by fellow members of the Communist
League, it remained, according to Friedrich Engels, "a simple dictatorship by Marx".
Whilst editor of the paper, Marx and the other revolutionary socialists were
regularly harassed by the police, and Marx was brought to trial on several occasions,
facing various allegations including insulting the Chief Public Prosecutor, committing a
press misdemeanor, and inciting armed rebellion through tax boycotting, although each
time he was acquitted. Meanwhile, the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed, and
the king, Frederick William IV, introduced a new cabinet of his reactionary supporters,
who implemented counter-revolutionary measures to expunge leftist and other
revolutionary elements from the country. Consequently, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was
soon suppressed and Marx was ordered to leave the country on 16 May. Marx returned to
Paris, which was then under the grip of both a reactionary counter-revolution and a
cholera epidemic, and was soon expelled by the city authorities, who considered him a
political threat. With his wife, Jenny, expecting their fourth child, and not able to move
back to Germany or Belgium, in August 1849 he sought refuge in London.

Life in London
Marx moved to London in early June 1849 and would remain based in the city for
the rest of his life. The headquarters of the Communist League also moved to London.
However, in the winter of 18491850, a split within the ranks of the Communist League
occurred when a faction within it led by August Willich and Karl Schapper began
agitating for an immediate uprising. Willich and Schapper believed that once the
Communist League had initiated the uprising, the entire working class from across
Europe would rise "spontaneously" to join it, thus, creating revolution across Europe.
Marx and Engels protested that such an unplanned uprising on the part of the Communist
League was "adventuristic" and would be suicide for the Communist League. Such an
uprising as that recommended by the Schapper/Willich group would easily be crushed by
41

the police and the armed forces of the reactionary governments of Europe. This, Marx
maintained, would spell doom for the Communist League itself. Changes in society,
Marx argued, are not achieved overnight through the efforts and will power of "a handful
of men." Instead, they are brought about through a scientific analysis of economic
conditions of society and by moving toward revolution through different stages of social
development. In the present stage of development (circa 1850), following the defeat of
the uprisings across Europe in 1848, Marx felt that the Communist League should
encourage the working class to unite with progressive elements of the rising bourgeoisie
to defeat the feudal aristocracy on issues involving demands for governmental reforms,
such as a constitutional republic with freely elected assemblies and universal (male)
suffrage. In other words, the working class must join with bourgeois and democratic
forces to bring about the successful conclusion of the bourgeois revolution before
stressing the working class agenda and a working class revolution.
After a long struggle which threatened to ruin the Communist League, Marx's
opinion prevailed and, eventually, the Willich/Schapper group left the Communist
League. Meanwhile, Marx also became heavily involved with the socialist German
Workers' Educational Society. The Society held their meetings in Great Windmill Street,
Soho, central London's entertainment district. This organisation was also racked by an
internal struggle between its members, some of whom followed Marx while others
followed the Schapper/Willich faction. The issues in this internal split were the same
issues raised in the internal split within the Communist League. Marx, however, lost the
fight with the Schapper/Willich faction within the German Workers' Educational Society
and, on 17 September 1850, resigned from the Society.

42

Personal life

Jenny Carolina and Jenny Laura Marx (1869). All the Marx daughters were named in honour of
their mother, Jenny von Westphalen.

Marx and von Westphalen had seven children together, but partly owing to the
poor conditions in which they lived whilst in London, only three survived to adulthood.
The children were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 18441883); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue;
18451911); Edgar (18471855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 18491850); Jenny
Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 18511852); Jenny Julia Eleanor (18551898) and one
more who died before being named (July 1857). There are allegations that Marx also
fathered a son, Freddy, out of wedlock by his housekeeper, Helene Demuth.
Marx frequently used pseudonyms, often when renting a house or flat, apparently
to make it harder for the authorities to track him down. While in Paris, he used that of
"Monsieur Ramboz", whilst in London he signed off his letters as "A. Williams". His
friends referred to him as "Moor", owing to his dark complexion and black curly hair,
while he encouraged his children to call him "Old Nick" and "Charley". He also bestowed
nicknames and pseudonyms on his friends and family as well, referring to Friedrich
Engels as "General", his housekeeper Helene as "Lenchen" or "Nym", while one of his
daughters, Jennychen, was referred to as "Qui Qui, Emperor of China" and another,
Laura, was known as "Kakadou" or "the Hottentot".

43

According to Sylvia Nasar, Marx never learned to properly speak English and
never visited an English factory despite living in England during his last thirty years.

Death

Memorial to Karl Marx, East Highgate Cemetery, London

Following the death of his wife, Jenny, in December 1881, Marx developed a
catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought
on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on 14 March 1883 (age 64). He
died a stateless person; family and friends in London buried his body in Highgate
Cemetery, London, on 17 March 1883. There were between nine and eleven mourners at
his funeral.
Several of his closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht
and Friedrich Engels. Engels' speech included the passage:
On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living
thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we
came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleepbut forever.
Marx's last words before dying were "Go on,Get Out! Last words are for fools
who haven't said enough."
44

Marx's daughters Eleanor and Laura, as well as Charles Longuet and Paul
Lafargue, Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, were also in attendance. Liebknecht, a
founder and leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, gave a speech in German,
and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, made a short
statement in French. Two telegrams from workers' parties in France and Spain were also
read out. Together with Engels's speech, this constituted the entire programme of the
funeral. Non-relatives attending the funeral included three communist associates of Marx:
Friedrich Lessner, imprisoned for three years after the Cologne communist trial of 1852;
G. Lochner, whom Engels described as "an old member of the Communist League"; and
Carl Schorlemmer, a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the Royal
Society, and a communist activist involved in the 1848 Baden revolution. Another
attendee of the funeral was Ray Lankester, a British zoologist who would later become a
prominent academic.
Upon his own death in 1895, Engels left Marx's two surviving daughters a
"significant portion" of his $4.8 million estate.
Marx and his family were reburied on a new site nearby in November 1954. The
memorial at the new site, unveiled on 14 March 1956, bears the carved message:
"WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE", the final line of The Communist Manifesto, and
from the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach (edited by Engels): "The philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various waysthe point however is to change it". The
Communist Party of Great Britain had the monument with a portrait bust by Laurence
Bradshaw erected; Marx's original tomb had only humble adornment. In 1970 there was
an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the monument using a homemade bomb.
The late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm remarked that "One cannot say Marx
died a failure" because, although he had not achieved a large following of disciples in
Britain, his writings had already begun to make an impact on the leftist movements in
Germany and Russia. Within 25 years of his death, the continental European socialist
parties that acknowledged Marx's influence on their politics were each gaining between
15 and 47 per cent in those countries with representative democratic elections.
45

Thought
Influences
Marx's thought demonstrates influences from many thinkers, including but not limited to:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's philosophy;

the classical political economy (economics) of Adam Smith and David Ricardo;

French socialist thought, in particular the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri de

Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Charles Fourier.

earlier German philosophical materialism among the Young Hegelians, particularly that
of Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer; as well as the French materialism of the late 18th
Century, including Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvtius, and d'Holbach.

the working class analysis by Friedrich Engels. As well as the early descriptions of class
provided by French liberals and Saint-Simonians such as Franois Guizot and Augustin
Thierry.

Marx's view of history, which came to be called historical materialism

(controversially adapted as the philosophy of dialectical materialism by Engels and
Lenin) certainly shows the influence of Hegel's claim that one should view reality (and
history) dialectically. However, Hegel had thought in idealist terms, putting ideas in the
forefront, whereas Marx sought to rewrite dialectics in materialist terms, arguing for the
primacy of matter over idea. Where Hegel saw the "spirit" as driving history, Marx saw
this as an unnecessary mystification, obscuring the reality of humanity and its physical
actions shaping the world. He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on
its head, and that one needed to set it upon its feet. Despite his dislike of mystical terms
Marx used Gothic language in several of his works. In Das Kapital he refers to capital as
"necromancy that surrounds the products of labour".
Though inspired by French socialist and sociological thought, Marx criticised
utopian socialists, arguing that their favoured small-scale socialistic communities would
46

be bound to marginalisation and poverty, and that only a large-scale change in the
economic system can bring about real change.
The other important contribution to Marx's revision of Hegelianism came from
Engels's book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, which led Marx
to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern
working class as the most progressive force for revolution.
Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically and discern
tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of
Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist revolution would inevitably occur.
However, Marx famously asserted in the eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach that
"philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to
change it", and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to alter the world.

Philosophy and social thought

Marx's polemic with other thinkers often occurred through critique, and thus he
has been called "the first great user of critical method in social sciences." He criticised
speculative philosophy, equating metaphysics with ideology. By adopting this approach,
Marx attempted to separate key findings from ideological biases. This set him apart from
many contemporary philosophers.

Human nature

47

The philosophers G. W. F. Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach, whose ideas on dialectics heavily
influenced Marx

Like Tocqueville, who described a faceless and bureaucratic despotism with no

identifiable despot, Marx also broke with classical thinkers who spoke of a single tyrant
and with Montesquieu, who discussed the nature of the single despot. Instead, Marx set
out to analyse "the despotism of capital". Fundamentally, Marx assumed that human
history involves transforming human nature, which encompasses both human beings and
material objects. Humans recognise that they possess both actual and potential selves. For
both Marx and Hegel, self-development begins with an experience of internal alienation
stemming from this recognition, followed by a realisation that the actual self, as a
subjective agent, renders its potential counterpart an object to be apprehended. Marx
further argues that, by moulding nature in desired ways, the subject takes the object as its
own, and thus permits the individual to be actualised as fully human. For Marx, then,
human natureGattungswesen, or species-beingexists as a function of human labour.
Fundamental to Marx's idea of meaningful labour is the proposition that, in order for a
subject to come to terms with its alienated object, it must first exert influence upon literal,
material objects in the subject's world. Marx acknowledges that Hegel "grasps the nature
of work and comprehends objective man, authentic because actual, as the result of his
own work", but characterises Hegelian self-development as unduly "spiritual" and
abstract. Marx thus departs from Hegel by insisting that "the fact that man is a corporeal,
actual, sentient, objective being with natural capacities means that he has actual,
sensuous objects for his nature as objects of his life-expression, or that he can only
express his life in actual sensuous objects." Consequently, Marx revises Hegelian "work"
into material "labour", and in the context of human capacity to transform nature the term
"labour power".

Labor, class struggle, and false consciousness

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto[

48

Marx had a special concern with how people relate to their own labour power. He
wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic,
Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist
conception. Capitalism mediates social relationships of production (such as among
workers or between workers and capitalists) through commodities, including labour, that
are bought and sold on the market. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up
ownership of one's own labourone's capacity to transform the worldis tantamount to
being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss as
commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to
have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behaviour merely
adapt.
Commodity fetishism provides an example of what Engels called "false
consciousness", which relates closely to the understanding of ideology. By "ideology",
Marx and Engels meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular
time in history, but which contemporaries see as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels's
point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths; they serve an important
political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of
production includes not only the production of food or manufactured goods; it includes
the production of ideas as well (this provides one possible explanation for why members
of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests). An example of this
sort of analysis is Marx's understanding of religion, summed up in a passage from the
preface to his 1843 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering
and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the
people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for
their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to
call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

49

Whereas his Gymnasium senior thesis argued that religion had as its primary
social aim the promotion of solidarity, here Marx sees the social function of religion in
terms of highlighting/preserving political and economic status quo and inequality.

Economy, history, and society

Marx's thoughts on labour were related to the primacy he gave to the economic
relation in determining the society's past, present and future (see also economic
determinism). Accumulation of capital shapes the social system. Social change, for Marx,
was about conflict between opposing interests, driven, in the background, by economic
forces. This became the inspiration for the body of works known as the conflict theory. In
his evolutionary model of history, he argued that human history began with free,
productive and creative work that was over time coerced and dehumanised, a trend most
apparent under capitalism. Marx noted that this was not an intentional process; rather, no
individual or even state can go against the forces of economy.
The organization of society depends on means of production. Literally those
things, like land, natural resources, and technology, necessary for the production of
material goods and the relations of production, in other words, the social relationships
people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these
compose the mode of production, and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of
distinct modes of production. Marx differentiated between base and superstructure, with
the base (or substructure) referring to the economic system, and superstructure, to the
cultural and political system. Marx regarded this mismatch between (economic) base and
(social) superstructure as a major source of social disruption and conflict.
Despite Marx's stress on critique of capitalism and discussion of the new
communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique of capitalism is guarded, as
he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudal). Marx
also never clearly discusses issues of morality and justice, although scholars agree that
his work contained implicit discussion of those concepts.
50

Memorial to Karl Marx in Moscow. The inscription reads "Proletarians of all

countries, unite!"

Marx's view of capitalism was two-sided. On one hand, Marx, in the 19th
century's deepest critique of the dehumanizing aspects of this system, noted that defining
features of capitalism include alienation, exploitation, and recurring, cyclical depressions
leading to mass unemployment; on the other hand capitalism is also characterized by
"revolutionizing, industrializing and universalizing qualities of development, growth and
progressivity" (by which Marx meant industrialization, urbanization, technological
progress, increased productivity and growth, rationality and scientific revolution), that are
responsible for progress. Marx considered the capitalist class to be one of the most
revolutionary in history, because it constantly improved the means of production, more so
than any other class in history, and was responsible for the overthrow of feudalism and its
transition to capitalism. Capitalism can stimulate considerable growth because the
capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies and capital
equipment.
According to Marx, capitalists take advantage of the difference between the
labour market and the market for whatever commodity the capitalist can produce. Marx
observed that in practically every successful industry, input unit-costs are lower than
output unit-prices. Marx called the difference "surplus value" and argued that this surplus
value had its source in surplus labour, the difference between what it costs to keep
51

workers alive and what they can produce. Marx's dual view of capitalism can be seen in
his description of the capitalists: he refers to them as to vampires sucking worker's blood,
but at the same time, he notes that drawing profit is "by no means an injustice" and that
capitalists simply cannot go against the system. The true problem lies with the "cancerous
cell" of capital, understood not as property or equipment, but the relations between
workers and ownersthe economic system in general.
At the same time, Marx stressed that capitalism was unstable, and prone to
periodic crises. He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in
new technologies, and less and less in labor. Since Marx believed that surplus value
appropriated from labour is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate of profit
would fall even as the economy grew. Marx believed that increasingly severe crises
would punctuate this cycle of growth, collapse, and more growth. Moreover, he believed
that in the long-term, this process would necessarily enrich and empower the capitalist
class and impoverish the proletariat. In section one of The Communist Manifesto, Marx
describes feudalism, capitalism, and the role internal social contradictions play in the
historical process:
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the
bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the
development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which
feudal society produced and exchanged ... the feudal relations of property became no
longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many
fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped
free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the
economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on
before our own eyes ... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to
further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they
have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon
as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society,
endanger the existence of bourgeois property.

52

Marx believed that industrial workers (the proletariat) would rise up around the world.

Marx believed that those structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its
end, giving way to socialism, or a post-capitalistic, communist society:
The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very
foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the
bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the
victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."
Thanks to various processes overseen by capitalism, such as urbanisation, the
working class, the proletariat, should grow in numbers and develop class consciousness,
in time realising that they have to and can change the system. Marx believed that if the
proletariat were to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations
that would benefit everyone equally, abolishing exploiting class, and introduce a system
of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises. Marx argued in The German Ideology that
capitalism will end through the organised actions of an international working class:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to
which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which
abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the
premises now in existence."
In this new society, the self-alienation would end, and humans would be free to
act without being bound by the labour market. It would be a democratic society,
enfranchising the entire population. In such a utopian world there would also be little if
53

any need for a state, which goal was to enforce the alienation. He theorised that between
capitalism and the establishment of a socialist/communist system, a dictatorship of the
proletariata period where the working class holds political power and forcibly
socialises the means of productionwould exist. As he wrote in his "Critique of the
Gotha Program", "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the
revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a
political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat." While he allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition
in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures (such as Britain, the US
and the Netherlands), he suggested that in other countries with strong centralized stateoriented traditions, like France and Germany, the "lever
of our revolution must be force."

Albert Einstein
Born

14 March 1879
Ulm, Kingdom of Wrttemberg, German Empire

Died

18 April 1955 (aged 76)

Princeton, New Jersey, United States

Early life and education

54

Einstein at the age of 3 in 1882 Albert Einstein in 1893 (age 14)

Einstein's
matriculation
certificate at the
age of 17,
showing his final
grades from the
Argovian
cantonal school
(Aargauische
Kantonsschule,
on a scale of 16,
with 6 being the
highest possible
mark)

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Wrttemberg in the German
Empire on 14 March 1879. His parents were Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer,
and Pauline Koch. In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where Einstein's father and his
uncle Jakob founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that
manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.
The Einsteins were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews, and Albert attended a Catholic
elementary school from the age of 5 for three years. At the age of 8, he was transferred to
the Luitpold Gymnasium (now known as the Albert Einstein Gymnasium), where he
received advanced primary and secondary school education until he left Germany seven
years later.
In 1894, Hermann and Jakob's company lost a bid to supply the city of Munich
with electrical lighting because they lacked the capital to convert their equipment from
the direct current (DC) standard to the more efficient alternating current (AC) standard.
The loss forced the sale of the Munich factory. In search of business, the Einstein family
moved to Italy, first to Milan and a few months later to Pavia. When the family moved to
Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His
father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with
authorities and resented the school's regimen and teaching method. He later wrote that the
spirit of learning and creative thought was lost in strict rote learning. At the end of
December 1894, he travelled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to

55

let him go by using a doctor's note. During his time in Italy he wrote a short essay with
the title "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".
In 1895, at the age of 16, Einstein sat the entrance examinations for the Swiss
Federal Polytechnic in Zrich (later the Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule, ETH).
He failed to reach the required standard in the general part of the examination, but
obtained exceptional grades in physics and mathematics. On the advice of the principal of
the Polytechnic, he attended the Argovian cantonal school (gymnasium) in Aarau,
Switzerland, in 189596 to complete his secondary schooling. While lodging with the
family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie.
(Albert's sister Maja later married Wintelers' son Paul.) In January 1896, with his father's
approval, Einstein renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Wrttemberg to
avoid military service. In September 1896, he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good
grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 1
6. Though only 17, he enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching
diploma program at the Zrich Polytechnic. Marie Winteler moved to Olsberg,
Switzerland, for a teaching post.
Einstein's future wife, Mileva Mari, also enrolled at the Polytechnic that year.
She was the only woman among the six students in the mathematics and physics section
of the teaching diploma course. Over the next few years, Einstein and Mari's friendship
developed into romance, and they read books together on extra-curricular physics in
which Einstein was taking an increasing interest. In 1900, Einstein was awarded the
Zrich Polytechnic teaching diploma, but Mari failed the examination with a poor grade
in the mathematics component, theory of functions. There have been claims that Mari
collaborated with Einstein on his celebrated 1905 papers, but historians of physics who
have studied the issue find no evidence that she made any substantive contributions.

Personal life

56

Supporter of civil rights

Einstein was a passionate, committed antiracist and joined National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Princeton, where he campaigned for
the civil rights of African Americans. He considered racism America's "worst disease,"
seeing it as "handed down from one generation to the next." As part of his involvement,
he corresponded with civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois and was prepared to testify on
his behalf during his trial in 1951.When Einstein offered to be a character witness for Du
Bois, the judge decided to drop the case.
In 1946 Einstein visited Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he was
awarded an honorary degree. Lincoln was the first university in the United States to grant
college degrees to blacks, including Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. To its
students, Einstein gave a speech about racism in America, adding, "I do not intend to be
quiet about it." A resident of Princeton recalls that Einstein had once paid the college
tuition for a black student, and black physicist Sylvester James Gates states that Einstein
had been one of his early science heroes, later finding out about Einstein's support for
civil rights.

Assisting Zionist causes

Einstein was a figurehead leader in helping establish the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, which opened in 1925, and was among its first Board of Governors. Earlier, in
1921, he was asked by the biochemist and president of the World Zionist Organization,
Chaim Weizmann, to help raise funds for the planned university. He also submitted
various suggestions as to its initial programs.
Among those, he advised first creating an Institute of Agriculture in order to settle
the undeveloped land. That should be followed, he suggested, by a Chemical Institute and
an Institute of Microbiology, to fight the various ongoing epidemics such as malaria,
which he called an "evil" that was undermining a third of the country's development.
Establishing an Oriental Studies Institute, to include language courses given in both
57

Hebrew and Arabic, for scientific exploration of the country and its historical
monuments, was also important.
Chaim Weizmann later became Israel's first president. Upon his death while in
office in November 1952 and at the urging of Ezriel Carlebach, Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion offered Einstein the position of President of Israel, a mostly ceremonial post.
The offer was presented by Israel's ambassador in Washington, Abba Eban, who
explained that the offer "embodies the deepest respect which the Jewish people can
repose in any of its sons". Einstein declined, and wrote in his response that he was
"deeply moved", and "at once saddened and ashamed" that he could not accept it.

Love of music
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live
my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of
music. -- Albert Einstein
Einstein developed an appreciation of music at an early age. His mother played
the piano reasonably well and wanted her son to learn the violin, not only to instill in him
a love of music but also to help him assimilate into German culture. According to
conductor Leon Botstein, Einstein is said to have begun playing when he was 5, although
he did not enjoy it at that age.

58

Albert Einstein playing violin

Einstein with writer and musician and Nobel laureate Rabindranath

Tagore, 1930

When he turned 13 he discovered the violin sonatas of Mozart, whereupon

"Einstein fell in love" with Mozart's music and studied music more willingly. He taught
himself to play without "ever practicing systematically", he said, deciding that "love is a
better teacher than a sense of duty." At age 17, he was heard by a school examiner in
Aarau as he played Beethoven's violin sonatas, the examiner stating afterward that his
playing was "remarkable and revealing of 'great insight'." What struck the examiner,
writes Botstein, was that Einstein "displayed a deep love of the music, a quality that was
and remains in short supply. Music possessed an unusual meaning for this student."
Music took on a pivotal and permanent role in Einstein's life from that period on.
Although the idea of becoming a professional himself was not on his mind at any time,
among those with whom Einstein played chamber music were a few professionals, and he
performed for private audiences and friends. Chamber music had also become a regular
part of his social life while living in Bern, Zrich, and Berlin, where he played with Max
Planck and his son, among others. He is sometimes erroneously credited as the editor of
the 1937 edition of the Kchel catalogue of Mozart's work; that edition was actually
prepared by Alfred Einstein, who may have been a distant relation.
In 1931, while engaged in research at the California Institute of Technology, he
visited the Zoellner family conservatory in Los Angeles, where he played some of
59

Beethoven and Mozart's works with members of the Zoellner Quartet. Near the end of his
life, when the young Juilliard Quartet visited him in Princeton, he played his violin with
them, and the quartet was "impressed by Einstein's level of coordination and intonation."

Political and religious views

Albert Einstein with his wife Elsa Einstein and Zionist leaders, including future President of
Israel Chaim Weizmann, his wife Vera Weizmann, Menahem Ussishkin, and Ben-Zion Mossinson
on arrival in New York City in 1921

Einstein's political view was in favor of socialism and critical of capitalism, which
he detailed in his essays such as "Why Socialism?". Einstein offered and was called on to
give judgments and opinions on matters often unrelated to theoretical physics or
mathematics. He strongly advocated the idea of a democratic global government that
would check the power of nation-states in the framework of a world federation.
Einstein's views about religious belief have been collected from interviews and
original writings. He called himself an agnostic, while disassociating himself from the
label atheist. He said he believed in the "pantheistic" God of Baruch Spinoza, but not in a
personal god, a belief he criticized. Einstein once wrote: "I do not believe in a personal
God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly".

Death
On 17 April 1955, Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the
rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which had previously been reinforced
60

surgically by Rudolph Nissen in 1948. He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for
a television appearance commemorating the State of Israel's seventh anniversary with
him to the hospital, but he did not live long enough to complete it.
Einstein refused surgery, saying: "I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to
prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly." He
died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to
work until near the end.
During the autopsy, the pathologist of Princeton Hospital, Thomas Stoltz Harvey,
removed Einstein's brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the
hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so
intelligent. Einstein's remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered at an
undisclosed location.
In his lecture at Einstein's memorial, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer
summarized his impression of him as a person: "He was almost wholly without
sophistication and wholly without worldliness ... There was always with him a wonderful
purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn."

Theory of relativity and E = mc

Einstein's "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Krper" ("On the Electrodynamics of
Moving Bodies") was received on 30 June 1905 and published 26 September of that same
year. It reconciles Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of
mechanics, by introducing major changes to mechanics close to the speed of light. This
later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity.
Consequences of this include the time-space frame of a moving body appearing to
slow down and contract (in the direction of motion) when measured in the frame of the

61

observer. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aetherone of the
leading theoretical entities in physics at the timewas superfluous.
In his paper on massenergy equivalence, Einstein produced E = mc2 from his special
relativity equations. Einstein's 1905 work on relativity remained controversial for many
years, but was accepted by leading physicists, starting with Max Planck.

Isa

ac
Born

Newton

25 December 1642
[NS: 4 January 1643][1]
Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England

Died

20 March 1726/7 (aged 84)

[OS: 20 March 1726
NS: 31 March 1727][1]
Kensington, Middlesex, England

62

Early life
Isaac Newton was born according to the Julian calendar (in use in England at the
time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643), at Woolsthorpe Manor
in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. He was born
three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton.
Born prematurely, he was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that
he could have fit inside a quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and
went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the
care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough. The young Isaac disliked his
stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed
by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and
mother Smith to burn them and the house over them." Newton's mother had three
children from her second marriage.

63

Newton in a 1702 portrait by

Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Famous Men of

Godfrey Kneller

Science. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1889)

From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at
The King's School, Grantham which taught him Latin but no mathematics. He was
removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-byColsterworth, where his mother, widowed for a second time, attempted to make a farmer
of him. Newton hated farming. Henry Stokes, master at the King's School, persuaded his
mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. Motivated
partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked
student, distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills.
In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on the
recommendation of his uncle Rev William Ayscough. He started as a subsizarpaying
his way by performing valet's dutiesuntil he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which
guaranteed him four more years until he would get his M.A. At that time, the college's
teachings were based on those of Aristotle, whom Newton supplemented with modern
philosophers such asDescartes, and astronomers such as Galileo and Thomas Street,
through whom he learned of Kepler's work. He set down in his notebook a series of
'Quaestiones' about mechanical philosophy as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the
generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later
became calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his B.A. degree in August 1665, the
university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague. Although he had
64

been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, Newton's private studies at his home in

Woolsthorpe over the subsequent two years saw the development of his theories on
calculus, optics, and the law of gravitation.
In April 1667, he returned to Cambridge and in October was elected as a fellow of
Trinity.
Fellows were required to become ordained priests, although this was not enforced
in the restoration years and an assertion of conformity to the Church of England was
sufficient. However, by 1675 the issue could not be avoided and by then his
unconventional views stood in the way.Nevertheless, Newton managed to avoid it by
means of a special permission from Charles II.
His studies had impressed the Lucasian professor, Isaac Barrow, who was more
anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of
Trinity two years later), and in 1669, Newton succeeded him, only one year after he
received his M.A. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672.

Mathematics
Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics
then studied". His work on the subject usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in
a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers.
The author of the manuscript De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas,
sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669, was identified by Barrow in a letter
sent to Collins in August of that year as:
Mr Newton, a fellow of our College, and very young ... but of an extraordinary
genius and proficiency in these things.
Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the
development of calculus (the LeibnizNewton calculus controversy). Most modern
historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed calculusindependently, although
with very different notations. Occasionally it has been suggested that Newton published
almost nothing about it until 1693, and did not give a full account until 1704, while
65

Leibniz began publishing a full account of his methods in 1684. (Leibniz's notation and
"differential Method", nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were
adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British
mathematicians.) Such a suggestion, however, fails to notice the content of calculus
which critics of Newton's time and modern times have pointed out in Book 1 of Newton's
Principia itself (published 1687) and in its forerunner manuscripts, such as De motu
corporum in gyrum ("On the motion of bodies in orbit"), of 1684. The Principia is not
written in the language of calculus either as we know it or as Newton's (later) 'dot'
notation would write it. His work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on
limiting values of the ratios of vanishing small quantities: in the Principia itself, Newton
gave demonstration of this under the name of 'the method of first and last ratios' and
explained why he put his expositions in this form, remarking also that 'hereby the same
thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles'.
Because of this, the Principia has been called "a book dense with the theory and
application of the infinitesimal calculus" in modern times and "lequel est presque tout de
ce calcul" ('nearly all of it is of this calculus') in Newton's time. His use of methods
involving "one or more orders of the infinitesimally small" is present in his De motu
corporum in gyrum of 1684 and in his papers on motion "during the two decades
preceding 1684".
Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy
and criticism. He was close to the Swiss mathematicianNicolas Fatio de Duillier. In 1691,
Duillier started to write a new version of Newton's Principia, and corresponded with
Leibniz. In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book
was never completed.
Starting in 1699, other members of the Royal Society (of which Newton was a
member) accused Leibniz of plagiarism. The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711
when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true
discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud. This study was cast into doubt when it was later
found that Newton himself wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began

66

the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's
death in 1716.
Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any
exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane
curves (polynomials of degree three in twovariables), made substantial contributions to
the theory of finite differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to
employcoordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He
approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's
summation formula) and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert
power series. Newton's work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin's decimals.
A very useful modern account of Newton's mathematics was written by the foremost
scholar on Newton's mathematics, D.T. Whiteside or Tom Whiteside. Tom Whiteside
translated and edited all of Newton's mathematical writings and at the end of his life
wrote a summing up of Newton's work and its impact. This was published in 2013 as a
chapter in a book edited by Bechler.
When Newton received his MA and became a Fellow of the "College of the Holy
and Undivided Trinity" in 1667, he made the commitment that "I will either set Theology
as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these
statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college." Up till this point he had not
thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the thirty-nine
articles, the basis of Church of England doctrine.
He was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669 on Barrow's
recommendation. During that time, any Fellow of a college at Cambridge or Oxford was
required to take holy orders and become an ordained Anglican priest. However, the terms
of the Lucasian professorship required that the holder not be active in the church
(presumably so as to have more time for science). Newton argued that this should exempt
him from the ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed,
accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican
orthodoxy was averted.

Mechanics and gravitation

67

Newton's own copy of his Principia, with hand-written corrections for the second edition

In 1679, Newton returned to his work on (celestial) mechanics by considering

gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of
planetary motion. This followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 167980
with Hooke, who had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, and
who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal
Society transaction. Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received
further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 16801681, on which he
corresponded with John Flamsteed. After the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out
proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force
inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector (see Newton's law of universal
gravitation History and De motu corporum in gyrum). Newton communicated his
results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyrum, a
tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register
Book in December 1684. This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and
expanded to form the Principia.
The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial
help from Edmond Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of
motion. Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces
acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics.
They contributed to many advances during the Industrial Revolution which soon
followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these
advancements continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the

68

modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become
known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation.
In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical
analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave the first analytical determination (based on
Boyle's law) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth's spheroidal
figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's
gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the
irregularities in the motion of the moon, provided a theory for the determination of the
orbits of comets, and much more.
Newton made clear his heliocentric view of the Solar Systemdeveloped in a
somewhat modern way, because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the "deviation of
the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System. For Newton, it was not precisely
the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather "the
common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the
Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either is at rest or moves uniformly
forward in a right line" (Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common
consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest).
Newton's postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances led to him
being criticised for introducing "occult agencies" into science. Later, in the second
edition of the Principia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding
General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational
attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both
unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the
phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression"hypotheses nonfingo").
With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised. He acquired a
circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematicianNicolas Fatio de Duillier, with
whom he formed an intense relationship. This abruptly ended in 1693, and at the same
time Newton suffered anervous breakdown.

Classification of cubics and beyond

69

Descartes was the most important early influence on Newton the mathematician.
Descartes freed plane curves from the Greek and Macedonian limitation to conic
sections, and Newton followed his lead by classifying the cubic curves in the plane. He
found 72 of the 78 species of cubics. He also divided them into four types, satisfying
different equations, and in 1717 Stirling, probably with Newton's help, proved that every
cubic was one of these four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be
obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved in 1731.
According to Tom Whiteside (19322008), who published 8 volumes of Newton's
mathematical papers, it is no exaggeration to say that Newton mapped out the
development of mathematics for the next 200 years, and that Euler and others largely
carried out his plan.

Later life

Isaac Newton in old age in 1712, portrait by Sir James Thornhill

In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number ofreligious tracts dealing with the literal
and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in
which he disputed the fidelity of 1 John 5:7and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of
the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785.

70

Even though a number of authors have claimed that the work might have been an
indication that Newton disputed the belief in Trinity, others assure that Newton did
question the passage but never denied Trinity as such. His biographer, scientistSir David
Brewster, who compiled his manuscripts for over 20 years, wrote about the controversy
in well-known book Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton,
where he explains that Newton questioned the veracity of those passages, but he never
denied the doctrine of Trinity as such. Brewster states that Newton was never known as
an Arian during his lifetime, it was first William Whiston (an Arian) who argued that "Sir
Isaac Newton was so hearty for the Baptists, as well as for the Eusebians or Arians, that
he sometimes suspected these two were the two witnesses in the Revelations," while
other like Hopton Haynes (a Mint employee and Humanitarian), "mentioned to Richard
Baron, that Newton held the same doctrine as himself".
Later worksThe Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (1728)
andObservations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
were published after his death. He also devoted a great deal of time to alchemy (see
above).
Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge
University in 168990 and 17012, but according to some accounts his only comments
were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be
closed.
Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mintin
1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl
of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great
recoining, somewhat treading on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower (and
securing the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond
Halley). Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of
Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life. These
appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously, retiring from
his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercising his power to reform the currency and
punish clippers and counterfeiters.

71

As Warden, and afterwards Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20
percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696were counterfeit.
Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon's being hanged, drawn and
quartered. Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely
difficult. However, Newton proved equal to the task.
Disguised as a habitu of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence
himself. For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of
government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton
had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home countiesthere is a draft of a
letter regarding this matter stuck into Newton's personal first edition of his Philosophi
Naturalis Principia Mathematica which he must have been amending at the time. Then he
conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects
between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners.
As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords
Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury the bimetallic relationship between gold coins
and silver coins was changed by Royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding
the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings. This inadvertently resulted
in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid
for in gold, effectively moving Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. It
is a matter of debate as whether he intended to do this or not. It has been argued that
Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work.
Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the
French Acadmie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an
enemy of John Flamsteed, theAstronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's
Historia Coelestis Britannica, which Newton had used in his studies.

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Personal coat of arms of Sir Isaac Newton

In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity
College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political
considerations connected with the Parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any
recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint. Newton was
the second scientist to be knighted, after Sir Francis Bacon.
Newton was one of many people who lost heavily when the South Sea Company
collapsed. Their most significant trade was slaves, and according to his niece, he lost
around 20,000.
Towards the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near
Winchester with his niece and her husband, until his death in 1727. His half-niece,
Catherine Barton Conduitt, served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn
Street in London; he was her "very loving Uncle," according to his letter to her when she
was recovering from smallpox.
Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 (OS 20 March 1726; NS
31 March 1727) and was buried in Westminster Abbey.Voltaire may have been present at
his funeral. A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last
years, and diedintestate. After his death, Newton's hair was examined and found to
contain mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning
could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.

Personal relations
Although it was claimed that he was once engaged, Newton never married. The
French writer and philosopher Voltaire, who was in London at the time of Newton's
73

funeral, said that he "was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common
frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with womena circumstance which was
assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments". The
widespread belief that he died a virgin has been commented on by writers such as
mathematician Charles Hutton, economist John Maynard Keynes, and physicist Carl
Sagan.
Newton did have a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio
de Duillier, whom he met in London around 1690. Their friendship came to an
unexplained end in 1693. Some of their correspondence has survived.
In September of
that

Born

Died

wild
to

his

Pepys

Era

year, Newton had

c.570 BC
Samos

breakdown which

c. 495 BC (aged around 75)

Metapontum

accusatory letters

Ancient philosophy

and John Locke.

included sending
friends

Samuel

His note to the latter included the charge that Locke "endeavoured to embroil me with
woemen".

Pythagoras

Life

74

Bust of Pythagoras, Vatican

According to Clement of Alexandria, Pythagoras was a disciple of Soches, the

Egyptian archprophet, and Plato of Sechnuphis of Heliopolis.Herodotus, Isocrates, and
other early writers agree that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus, born on a Greek
island in the eastern Aegeancalled Samos. Pythagoras's father was a gem-engraver or a
merchant. Pythagoras's name led him to be associated with PythianApollo; Aristippus
explained his name by saying, "He spoke (agor-) the truth no less than did the Pythian
(Pyth-)", and Iamblichus tells the story that the Pythia prophesied that his pregnant
mother would give birth to a man supremely beautiful, wise, and beneficial to
humankind. A late source gives his mother's name as Pythais. As to the date of his birth,
Aristoxenus stated that Pythagoras left Samos in the reign ofPolycrates, at the age of 40,
which would give a date of birth around 570 BC.
Pythagoras's later fate is unknown and inconsistent among ancient sources. Some
say that he perished in the temple with his disciples, others that he fled first to Tarentum,
and that, being driven from there, he escaped to Metapontum, and there according to
Diogenes Lartius, starved himself to death. His tomb was shown at Metapontum in the
time of Cicero.
According to Walter Burkert (1972)

75

"Most obvious is the contradiction between Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus,

regarding the catastrophe that overwhelmed the Pythagorean society. One of the
two reports must be basically wrong: either Pythagoras withdrew to Metapontum
before the outbreak of the unrest and died there (as Aristoxenus says) or he and
his followers were hounded from city to city (as Dicaearchus has it). Like his
doctrines, the life of Pythagoras also becomes a mirror image of real controversies
in the schools. On the one hand there is the controversy over the primacy of the
theoretical or practical life. In this respect Heraclides thinks Pythagoras as the
apostle of pure 'theory'."
"There is not a single detail in the life of Pythagoras that stands uncontradicted.
But it is possible, from a more or less critical selection of the data, to construct a
plausible account."
According to Iamblichus (ca. 245-325 AD, 1918 translation) in The life of
Pythagoras, translated by Thomas Taylor
"Twenty-two years Pythagoras remained in Egypt, pursuing closely his
investigations, visiting every place famous for its teachings, every person
celebrated for wisdom. Astronomy and geometry he especially studied and he was
thoroughly initiated in all the mysteries of the gods, till, having been taken captive
by the soldiers of Cambyses, he was carried to Babylon. Here the Magi instructed
him in their venerable knowledge and he arrived at the summit of arithmetic,
music and other disciplines. After twelve years he returned to Samos, being then
about fifty-six years of age."

Family
According to some accounts Pythagoras married Theano, and it has been said that
she was first his pupil, a lady of Croton. According to Mary Ritter Beard, Theano told
Hippodamus of Thurium (may be Hippodamus of Miletus, who according to Aristotle
planned the city of Thurium in 440 BC),the treatise On Virtue, she wrote, contains the
doctrine of thegolden mean.
According to Thesleff, Stobaeus, and Heeren, Theano wrote in On Piety:
76

"I have learned that many of the Greeks believe Pythagoras said all things
are generated from number. The very assertion poses a difficulty: How can things
which do not exist even be conceived to generate? But he did not say that all
things come to be from number; rather, in accordance with number - on the
grounds that order in the primary sense is in number and it is by participation in
order that a first and a second and the rest sequentially are assigned to things
which are counted."
Their children are variously stated to have included a son, Telauges, and three
daughters, Damo, Arignote, and Myia (married to a famous wrestler,Milo of Croton).
Milo was said to be an associate of Pythagoras. One story tells of the wrestler saving the
philosopher's life when a roof was about to collapse.
Arignote wrote a Bacchica concerning the mysteries of Demeter, and a work
called The Rites of Dionysus. Among the Pythagorean Sacred Discourses there is a
dictum attributed to Arignote:
"The eternal essence of number is the most providential cause of the
whole heaven, earth and the region in between. Likewise it is the root of the
continued existence of the gods and daimones, as well as that of divine men."
Brewer (1894) mentioned "Pythagoras taught that the sun is a movable sphere in
the centre of the universe, and that all the planets revolve round it." Thus, it would appear
that Arignote's quote above is not entirely in alignment with his model of the universe,
since it is limited to Earth orbit.

Influence

77

A scene at the Chartres Cathedralshows a

philosopher, on one of thearchivolts over the
right door of the west portal at Chartres,
which has been attributed to depict
Pythagoras.

Before 520 BC, on one of his visits to Egypt or Greece, Pythagoras might have
met the c. 54 years older Thales of Miletus. Thales was a philosopher, scientist,
mathematician, and engineer, also known for the Thales' Theorem. Pythagoras' birthplace,
the island of Samos, is situated in the Northeast Aegean Sea not far from Miletus.
In the absence of reliable information, however, a huge range of teachers were
assigned to Pythagoras. Some made his training almost entirely Greek, others exclusively
Egyptian and Oriental. We find mentioned as his instructors Creophylus, Hermodamas of
Samos, Bias, Thales, Anaximander (a pupil of Thales), and Pherecydes of Syros.
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Lartius (3rd century CE)
cites the statement of Aristoxenus (4th century BCE) that theDelphic Themistoclea (also
known as Aristoclea) taught Pythagoras hismoral doctrines:
"Aristoxenus says that Pythagoras got most of his moral doctrines from
the Delphic priestess Themistoclea."
Porphyry (233 305 CE) calls her Aristoclea (Aristokleia), and wrote:
"He (Pythagoras) taught much else, which he claimed to have learned
from Aristoclea at Delphi."
The Egyptians are said to have taught him geometry, the Phoeniciansarithmetic,
the Chaldeans astronomy, the Magians the principles of religion and practical maxims for
the conduct of life. Of the various claims regarding his Greek teachers, Pherecydes of
Syros is mentioned most often.
78

According to R.D. Hicks (1972) Pythagoras not only visited Egypt and learnt the
Egyptian language (Antiphon in book On Men of Outstanding Merit), but also "journeyed
among the Chaldaeans and Magi." Later inCrete, he went to the Cave of Ida with
Epimenides; and entered Egyptian sanctuaries for the purpose to learn information
concerning the secret lore of the different gods.[39] Plutarch asserted in his book On Isis
and Osiris that during his visit to Egypt, Pythagoras received instruction from the
Egyptian priest Oenuphis of Heliopolis. Other ancient writers asserted his visit to Egypt.
Enough of Egypt was known to attract the curiosity of an inquiring Greek, and contact
between Samos and other parts of Greece with Egypt is mentioned.
Ancient

authorities

note

the

similarities

between

the

religious

and

asceticpeculiarities of Pythagoras with the Orphic or Cretan mysteries, or theDelphic

oracle.

Views
There is little direct evidence as to the kind and amount of knowledge which
Pythagoras acquired, or as to his definite philosophical views. Everything of the kind
mentioned by Plato and Aristotle is attributed not to Pythagoras, but to the Pythagoreans.
Heraclitus stated that he was a man of extensive learning; and Xenophanes claimed that
he believed in the transmigration of souls. Xenophanes mentions the story of his
interceding on behalf of a dog that was being beaten, professing to recognise in its cries
the voice of a departed friend. Pythagoras is supposed to have claimed that he had been
Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, in the Trojan war, as well as various other characters, a
tradesman, a courtesan, etc. In his book The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus
wrote that Pythagoras knew not only who he was himself, but also who he had been.
Many mathematical and scientific discoveries were attributed to Pythagoras,
including his famous theorem, as well as discoveries in the field of music, astronomy, and
medicine. It is mentioned that the people of Croton were supposed to have identified him
with the Hyperborean Apollo, and he was said to have practised divination andprophecy.
In the visits to various places in Greece Delos, Sparta,Phlius, Crete, etc. which are

79

ascribed to him, he usually appears either in his religious or priestly guise, or else as a
lawgiver.
Excerpt from a speech by the character Aristotle in Protrepticus(Hutchinson and
Johnson, 2015)
"This is the thing for the sake of which nature and the god engendered us.
So what is this thing? When Pythagoras was asked, he said, to observe the
heavens, and he used to claim that he himself was an observer of nature, and it
was for the sake of this that he had passed over into life. And they say that when
somebody asked Anaxagoras for what reason anyone might choose to come to be
and be alive, he replied to the question by saying, To observe the heavens and the
stars in it, as well as moon and sun, since everything else at any rate is worth
nothing."

Pythagorean theorem
Since the fourth century AD, Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for
discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a rightangled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle)
is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sidesthat is, .
While the theorem that now bears his name was known and previously utilized by
the Babylonians and Indians, he, or his students, are often said to have constructed the
first proof. It must, however, be stressed that the way in which the Babylonians handled
Pythagorean numbers implies that they knew that the principle was generally applicable,
and knew some kind of proof, which has not yet been found in the (still largely
unpublished) cuneiform sources. Because of the secretive nature of his school and the
custom of its students to attribute everything to their teacher, there is no evidence that
Pythagoras himself worked on or proved this theorem. For that matter, there is no
evidence that he worked on any mathematical or meta-mathematical problems. Some
attribute it as a carefully constructed myth by followers of Plato over two centuries after
the death of Pythagoras, mainly to bolster the case for Platonic meta-physics, which
80

resonate well with the ideas they attributed to Pythagoras. This attribution has stuck down
the centuries up to modern times. The earliest known mention of Pythagoras's name in
connection with the theorem occurred five centuries after his death, in the writings of
Cicero and Plutarch.

Musical theories and investigations

Medieval woodcut showing Pythagoras

with bells and other instruments in
Pythagorean tuning

According to legend, the way Pythagoras discovered that musical notes could be
translated into mathematical equations was when he passed blacksmiths at work one day
and thought that the sounds emanating from their anvils were beautiful and harmonious
and decided that whatever scientific law caused this to happen must be mathematical and
could be applied to music. He went to the blacksmiths to learn how the sounds were
produced by looking at their tools. He discovered that it was because the hammers were
"simple ratios of each other, one was half the size of the first, another was 2/3 the size,
and so on".
This legend has since proven to be false by virtue of the fact that these ratios are
only relevant to string length (such as the string of a monochord), and not to hammer
weight. However, it may be that Pythagoras was indeed responsible for discovering the
properties of string length.
Pythagoreans elaborated on a theory of numbers, the exact meaning of which is
still debated among scholars. Another belief attributed to Pythagoras was that of the
81

"harmony of the spheres". Thus the planets and stars moved according to mathematical
equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus produced a symphony.
Brewer (1894)
"The music or harmony of the spheres. Pythagoras, having ascertained that the
pitch of notes depends on the rapidity of vibrations, and also that the planets move at
different rates of motion, concluded that the sounds made by their motion must vary
according to their different rates of motion. As all things in nature are harmoniously
made, the different sounds must harmonise, and the combination he called the harmony
of the spheres. Kepler has a treatise on the subject."

28 September, 551 BC
Born

Zou, Lu state, now China

Died

479 BC (aged 7172)

Lu state, now China

Confucious
Early Life
Confucius, also known as Kong Qui or Kung Fu-tzu, was born probably in 551
B.C. (lunar calendar) in present-day Qufu, Shandong Province,
China. Little is known of his childhood. Records of the Historian,
written by Ssu-ma Chien (born 145 B.C.; died 86 B.C.) offers the
most detailed account of Confucius life. However, some
contemporary historians are skeptical as to the records accuracy,
regarding it as myth, not fact. According to Records of the
Historian, Confucius was born into a royal family of the Chou
Dynasty. Other accounts describe him as being born into poverty.
82

What is undisputed about Confucius life is that he existed during a time of ideological
crisis in China.
It is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28, 551 BC. His
birthplace was in Zou, Lu state (near present-day Qufu, ShandongProvince). His father
Kong He (), also known as Shuliang He (), was an officer in the Lu military.
Kong He died when Confucius was three years old, and Confucius was raised by his
mother Yan Zhengzai ( ) in poverty. His mother would later die at less than 40
years of age. At age 19 he married his wife, surnamed Qiguan (), and a year later the
couple had their first child, Kong Li ( ) who was later known as "Boyu", which
means "Top Fish" in Chinese. Qiguan and Confucius would later have two daughters
together, one of whom is thought to have died early in her life as a child.
Confucius was educated at schools for commoners, where he studied and learned
the Six Arts.
Confucius was born into the class of shi ( ), between the aristocracy and the
common people. He is said to have worked in various government jobs during his early
20s, and also worked as a bookkeeper and a caretaker of sheep and horses, which he used
the proceeds from to give his mother a proper burial. When his mother died, Confucius
(aged 23) is said to have mourned for three years as was the tradition.

Political career
The Lu state was headed by a ruling ducal house. Under the duke were three
aristocratic families, whose heads bore the title of viscount and held hereditary positions
in the Lu bureaucracy. The Ji family held the position "Minister over the Masses", who
was also the "Prime Minister"; the Meng family held the position "Minister of Works";
and the Shu family held the position "Minister of War". In the winter of 505 BC, Yang Hu
a retainer of the Ji familyrose up in rebellion and seized power from the Ji family.
However, by the summer of 501 BC, the three hereditary families had succeeded in
expelling Yang Hu from Lu. By then, Confucius had built up a considerable reputation
through his teachings, while the families came to see the value of proper conduct and
83

righteousness, so they could achieve loyalty to a legitimate government. Thus, that year
(501 BC), Confucius came to be appointed to the minor position of governor of a town.
Eventually, he rose to the position of Minister of Crime.
Confucius desired to return the authority of the state to the duke by dismantling
the fortifications of the city-strongholds belonging to the three families. This way, he
could establish a centralized government. However, Confucius relied solely on diplomacy
as he had no military authority himself. In 500 BC, Hou Fanthe governor of Hou
revolted against his lord of the Shu family. Although the Meng and Shu families
unsuccessfully besieged Hou, a loyalist official rose up with the people of Hou and forced
Hou Fan to flee to the Qi state. The situation may have been in favor for Confucius as this
likely made it possible for Confucius and his disciples to convince the aristocratic
families to dismantle the fortifications of their cities. Eventually, after a year and a half,
Confucius and his disciples succeeded in convincing the Shu family to raze the walls of
Hou, the Ji family in razing the walls of Bi, and the Meng family in razing the walls of
Cheng. First, the Shu family led an army towards their city Hou and tore down its walls
in 498 BC. Soon thereafter, Gongshan Furao a retainer of the Ji familyrevolted and
took control of the forces at Bi. He immediately launched an attack and entered the
capital Lu.
Earlier, Gongshan had approached Confucius to join him, which Confucius
considered. Even though he disapproved the use of a violent revolution, the Ji family
dominated the Lu state force for generations and had exiled the previous duke. Although
he wanted the opportunity to put his principles in practice, Confucius gave up on this idea
in the end. Creel (1949) states that, unlike the rebel Yang Hu before him, Gongshan may
have sought to destroy the three hereditary families and restore the power of the duke.
However, Dubs (1946) is of the view that Gongshan was encouraged by Viscount Ji Huan
to invade the Lu capital in an attempt to avoid dismantling the Bi fortified walls.
Whatever the situation may have been, Gongshan was considered an upright man who
continued to defend the state of Lu, even after he was forced to flee.
During the revolt by Gongshan, Zhong You () had managed to keep the duke
and the three viscounts together at the court. Zhong You was one of the disciples of
84

Confucius and Confucius had arranged for him to be given the position of governor by
the Ji family. When Confucius heard of the raid, he requested that Viscount Ji Huan allow
the duke and his court to retreat to a stronghold on his palace grounds. Thereafter, the
heads of the three families and the duke retreated to the Ji's palace complex and ascended
the Wuzi Terrace. Confucius ordered two officers to lead an assault against the rebels. At
least one of the two officers was a retainer of the Ji family, but they were unable to refuse
the orders while in the presence of the duke, viscounts, and court. The rebels were
pursued and defeated at Gu. Immediately after the revolt was defeated, the Ji family razed
the Bi city walls to the ground.
The attackers retreated after realizing that they would have to become rebels
against the state and against their own lord. Through Confucius' actions, the Bi officials
had inadvertently revolted against their own lord, thus forcing Viscount Ji Huan's hand in
having to dismantle the walls of Bi (as it could have harbored such rebels) or confess to
instigating the event by going against proper conduct and righteousness as an official.
Dubs (1949) suggests that the incident brought to light Confucius' foresight, practical
political ability and his insight into human character.
When it was time to dismantle the city walls of the Meng family, the governor
was reluctant to have his city walls torn down and convinced the head of the Meng family
not to do so. The Zuo Zhuan recalls that the governor advised against razing the walls to
the ground as he said that it made Cheng vulnerable to the Qi state and cause the
destruction of the Meng family. Even though Viscount Meng Yi gave his word not to
interfere with an attempt, he went back on his earlier promise to dismantle the walls.
Later in 498 BC, Duke Ding personally went with an army to lay siege to Cheng in an
attempt to raze its walls to the ground, but he did not succeed. Thus, Confucius could not
achieve the idealistic reforms that he wanted including restoration of the legitimate rule
of the duke. He had made powerful enemies within the state, especially with Viscount Ji
Huan, due to his successes so far. According to accounts in the Zuo Zhuan and Shiji,
Confucius departed his homeland in 497 BC after his support for the failed attempt of
dismantling the fortified city walls of the powerful Ji, Meng, and Shu families. He left the
state of Lu without resigning, remaining in self-exile and unable to return as long as
Viscount Ji Huan was alive.
85

Exile
The Shiji states that the neighboring Qi state was worried that Lu was becoming
too powerful while Confucius was involved in the government of the Lu state. According
to this account, Qi decided to sabotage Lu's reforms by sending 100 good horses and 80
beautiful dancing girls to the Duke of Lu. The Duke indulged himself in pleasure and did
not attend to official duties for three days. Confucius was deeply disappointed and
resolved to leave Lu and seek better opportunities, yet to leave at once would expose the
misbehavior of the Duke and therefore bring public humiliation to the ruler Confucius
was serving. Confucius therefore waited for the Duke to make a lesser mistake. Soon
after, the Duke neglected to send to Confucius a portion of the sacrificial meat that was
his due according to custom, and Confucius seized upon this pretext to leave both his post
and the Lu state.
After Confucius' resignation, he began a long journey or set of journeys around
the small kingdoms of north-east and central China, traditionally including the states of
Wei, Song, Chen, and Cai. At the courts of these states, he expounded his political beliefs
but did not see them implemented.

Return home
According to the Zuo Zhuan, Confucius returned home to his native Lu when he
was 68, after he was invited to do so by Ji Kangzi, the chief minister of Lu. The Analects
depict him spending his last years teaching 72 or 77 disciples and transmitting the old
wisdom via a set of texts called the Five Classics.
During his return, Confucius sometimes acted as an advisor to several government
officials in Lu, including Ji Kangzi, on matters including governance and crime.

Philosophy
86

The Dacheng Hall, the main hall of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu

Although Confucianism is often followed in a religious manner by the Chinese,

many argue that its values are secular and therefore it isn't a religion, but more akin to a
secular morality. Proponents argue that despite the secular nature of Confucianism's
teachings, it is based on a worldview that is religious. Confucianism discusses elements
of theafterlife and views concerning Heaven, but it is relatively unconcerned with some
spiritual matters often considered essential to religious thought, such as the nature of
souls. However, Confucius is said to have believed in astrology saying: "Heaven sends
down its good or evil symbols and wise men act accordingly".

The Analects of Confucius

In the Analects, Confucius presents himself as a "transmitter who invented
nothing". He puts the greatest emphasis on the importance of study, and it is theChinese
character for study ( ) that opens the text. Far from trying to build a systematic
orformalist theory, he wanted his disciples to master and internalize the old classics, so
that their deep thought and thorough study would allow them to relate the moral problems
of the present to past political events (as recorded in the Annals) or the past expressions
of commoners' feelings and noblemen's reflections (as in the poems of the Book of Odes).

Ethics
One of the deepest teachings of Confucius may have been the superiority of
personal exemplification over explicit rules of behavior. His moral teachings emphasized
87

self-cultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgment

rather than knowledge of rules. Confucian ethics may be considered a type of virtue
ethics. His teachings rarely rely on reasoned argument and ethical ideals and methods are
conveyed more indirectly, through allusion, innuendo, and even tautology. His teachings
require examination and context in order to be understood. A good example is found in
this famous anecdote:

When the stables were burnt down, on returning from court Confucius
said, "Was anyone hurt?" He did not ask about the horses.

Analects X.11 (tr. Waley), 1013 (tr. Legge), or X-17 (tr. Lau)

By not asking about the horses, Confucius demonstrates that the sage values
human beings over property; readers are led to reflect on whether their response would
follow Confucius' and to pursue self-improvement if it would not have. Confucius, as an
exemplar of human excellence, serves as the ultimate model, rather than a deity or a
universally true set of abstract principles. For these reasons, according to many
commentators, Confucius' teachings may be considered a Chinese example ofhumanism.
One of his teachings was a variant of the Golden Rule sometimes called the "Silver Rule"
owing to its negative form:

"What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."

88

Zi Gong [a disciple] asked: "Is there any one word that could guide a
person throughout life?"
The Master replied: "How about 'reciprocity'! Never impose on others what you
would not choose for yourself."
Analects XV.24, tr. David Hinton
Often overlooked in Confucian ethics are the virtues to the self: sincerity and the
cultivation of knowledge. Virtuous action towards others begins with virtuous and sincere
thought, which begins with knowledge. A virtuous disposition without knowledge is
susceptible to corruption and virtuous action without sincerity is not true righteousness.
Cultivating knowledge and sincerity is also important for one's own sake; the superior
person loves learning for the sake of learning and righteousness for the sake of
righteousness.
The Confucian theory of ethics as exemplified in L ( ) is based on three
important conceptual aspects of life: (a) ceremonies associated with sacrifice to ancestors
and deities of various types, (b) social and political institutions, and (c) the etiquette of
daily behavior. It was believed by some that l originated from the heavens, but Confucius
stressed the development of l through the actions of sage leaders in human history. His
discussions of l seem to redefine the term to refer to all actions committed by a person to
build the ideal society, rather than those simply conforming with canonical standards of
ceremony.
In the early Confucian tradition, l was doing the proper thing at the proper time,
balancing between maintaining existing norms to perpetuate an ethical social fabric, and
violating them in order to accomplish ethical good. Training in the l of past sages
cultivates in people virtues that include ethical judgment about when l must be adapted
in light of situational contexts.
In Confucianism, the concept of li is closely related to y ( ), which is based
upon the idea of reciprocity. Y can be translated as righteousness, though it may simply
mean what is ethically best to do in a certain context. The term contrasts with action done
out of self-interest. While pursuing one's own self-interest is not necessarily bad, one
would be a better, more righteous person if one's life was based upon following a path

89

designed to enhance the greater good. Thus an outcome of y is doing the right thing for
the right reason.
Just as action according to L should be adapted to conform to the aspiration of
adhering to y, so y is linked to the core value of rn().Rn consists of 5 basic virtues:
seriousness, generosity, sincerity, diligence and kindness.[35] Rn is the virtue of
perfectly fulfilling one's responsibilities toward others, most often translated as
"benevolence" or "humaneness"; translator Arthur Waley calls it "Goodness" (with a
capital G), and other translations that have been put forth include "authoritativeness" and
"selflessness." Confucius' moral system was based upon empathy and understanding
others, rather than divinely ordained rules. To develop one's spontaneous responses of rn
so that these could guide action intuitively was even better than living by the rules of y.
Confucius asserts that virtue is a means between extremes. For example, the properly
generous person gives the right amountnot too much and not too little.

Politics
Confucius' political thought is based upon his ethical thought. He argued that the
best government is one that rules through "rites" (l) and people'snatural morality, and not
by using bribery and coercion. He explained that this is one of the most important
analects: "If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by
punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they
be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they
will have the sense of the shame, and moreover will become good." (Translated by James
Legge) in the Great Learning (). This "sense of shame" is an internalisation of duty,
where the punishment precedes the evil action, instead of following it in the form of laws
as in Legalism.
Confucius looked nostalgically upon earlier days, and urged the Chinese,
particularly those with political power, to model themselves on earlier examples. In times
of division, chaos, and endless wars between feudal states, he wanted to restore the
Mandate of Heaven () that could unify the "world" (, "all under Heaven") and
bestow peace and prosperity on the people. Because his vision of personal and social
90

perfections was framed as a revival of the ordered society of earlier times, Confucius is
often considered a great proponent of conservatism, but a closer look at what he proposes
often shows that he used (and perhaps twisted) past institutions and rites to push a new
political agenda of his own: a revival of a unified royal state, whose rulers would succeed
to power on the basis of their moral merits instead of lineage. These would be rulers
devoted to their people, striving for personal and socialperfection, and such a ruler would
spread his own virtues to the people instead of imposing proper behavior with laws and
rules.
Confucius did not believe in the concept of "democracy", which is itself
anAthenian concept unknown in ancient China, but could be interpreted by Confucius'
principles recommending against individuals electing their own political leaders to
govern them, or that anyone is capable of self-government. He expressed fears that the
masses lacked the intellect to make decisions for themselves, and that, in his view, since
not everyone is created equal, not everyone has a right of self-government.
While he supported the idea of government ruling by a virtuous king, his ideas
contained a number of elements to limit the power of rulers. He argued for representing
truth in language, and honesty was of paramount importance. Even in facial expression,
truth must always be represented. Confucius believed that if a ruler were to lead correctly,
by action, that orders would be deemed unnecessary in that others will follow the proper
actions of their ruler. In discussing the relationship between a king and his subject (or a
father and his son), he underlined the need to give due respect to superiors. This
demanded that the subordinates must give advice to their superiors if the superiors were
considered to be taking the course of action that was wrong. Confucius believed in ruling
by example, if you lead correctly, orders by force or punishment isn't necessary.

Legacy
Confucius' teachings were later turned into an elaborate set of rules and practices
by his numerous disciples and followers, who organized his teachings into the Analects.
Confucius' disciples and his only grandson,Zisi, continued his philosophical school after
his death. These efforts spread Confucian ideals to students who then became officials in
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many of the royal courts in China, thereby giving Confucianism the first wide-scale test
of its dogma.
Two of Confucius' most famous later followers emphasized radically different
aspects of his teachings. In the centuries after his death,Mencius ( ) and Xun Zi (
) both composed important teachings elaborating in different ways on the fundamental
ideas associated with Confucius. Mencius (4th century BC) articulated the innate
goodness in human beings as a source of the ethical intuitions that guide people towards
rn, y, and l, while Xun Zi (3rd century BC) underscored the realistic and materialistic
aspects of Confucian thought, stressing that morality was inculcated in society through
tradition and in individuals through training. In time, their writings, together with the
Analects and other core texts came to constitute the philosophical corpus of
Confucianism.
This realignment in Confucian thought was parallel to the development of
Legalism, which saw filial piety as self-interest and not a useful tool for a ruler to create
an effective state. A disagreement between these two political philosophies came to a
head in 223 BC when the Qin state conquered all of China. Li Si, Prime Minister of the
Qin Dynasty convincedQin Shi Huang to abandon the Confucians' recommendation of
awarding fiefs akin to the Zhou Dynasty before them which he saw as being against to
the Legalist idea of centralizing the state around the ruler. When the Confucian advisers
pressed their point, Li Si had many Confucian scholars killed and their books burned
considered a huge blow to the philosophy and Chinese scholarship.
Under the succeeding Han Dynasty and Tang dynasty, Confucian ideas gained
even more widespread prominence. Under Wudi, the works of Confucius were made the
official imperial philosophy and required reading for civil service examinations in 140
BC which was continued nearly unbroken until the end of the 19th Century. As Moism
lost support by the time of the Han, the main philosophical contenders were Legalism,
which Confucian thought somewhat absorbed, the teachings of Laozi, whose focus on
more spiritual ideas kept it from direct conflict with Confucianism, and the new Buddhist
religion, which gained acceptance during theSouthern and Northern Dynasties era. Both
Confucian ideas and Confucian-trained officials were relied upon in the Ming Dynasty
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and even the Yuan Dynasty, although Kublai Khan distrusted handing over provincial
control to them.
During the Song dynasty, the scholar Zhu Xi (AD 11301200) added ideas from
Daoism and Buddhism into Confucianism. In his life, Zhu Xi was largely ignored, but not
long after his death his ideas became the new orthodox view of what Confucian texts
actually meant. Modern historians view Zhu Xi as having created something rather
different, and call his way of thinking Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism held sway
in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam until the 19th century.

Life and Works of Confucius by Prospero Intorcetta, 1687.

The works of Confucius were translated into European languages through the
agency ofJesuit scholars stationed in China.[b] Matteo Ricci started to report on the
thoughts of Confucius, and father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of
Confucius into Latin in 1687.It is thought that such works had considerable importance
on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical
groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of
morality of Confucius into Western civilization.
In the modern era Confucian movements, such as New Confucianism, still exist
but during the Cultural Revolution, Confucianism was frequently attacked by leading
figures in the Communist Party of China. This was partially a continuation of the
condemnations of Confucianism by intellectuals and activists in the early 20th Century as
a cause of the ethnocentric close-mindedness and refusal of the Qing Dynasty to
modernize that led to the tragedies that befell China in the 19th Century.

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Confucius' works are studied by scholars in many other Asian countries,

particularly those in the Chinese cultural sphere, such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
Many of those countries still hold the traditional memorial ceremony every year.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes Confucius was a Divine Prophet of
God, as were Lao-Tzu and other eminent Chinese personages.
In modern times, Asteroid 7853, "Confucius", was named after the Chinese
thinker.

Thomas Aquinas

Born

28 January 1225
Roccasecca, Kingdom of Sicily, Italy

Died

7 March 1274 (aged 49)

Fossanova, Papal States

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Early life
Thomas was most probably born in the castle of Roccasecca, located inAquino,
old county of the Kingdom of Sicily (present-day Lazio region, Italy), c.1225. According
to some authors, he was born in the castle of his father, Landulf of Aquino. Though he did
not belong to the most powerful branch of the family, Landulf of Aquino was a man of
means. As a knight in the service of King Roger II, he held the title miles. Thomas's
mother, Theodora, belonged to the Rossi branch of the Neapolitan Caracciolo family.
Landulf's brother Sinibald was abbot of the first Benedictine monastery at Monte
Cassino. While the rest of the family's sons pursued military careers, the family intended
for Thomas to follow his uncle into the abbacy; This would have been a normal career
path for a younger son of southern Italian nobility.
At the age of five Thomas began his early education at Monte Cassino but after
the military conflict between the Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX spilled into
the abbey in early 1239, Landulf and Theodora had Thomas enrolled at the studium
generale (university) recently established by Frederick in Naples. It was here that Thomas
was probably introduced to Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of whom would
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influence his theological philosophy. It was also during his study at Naples that Thomas
came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher in Naples, who was
part of the active effort by the Dominican order to recruit devout followers. There his
teacher in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music was Petrus de Ibernia.

The Castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano

At the age of nineteen Thomas resolved to join the recently founded Dominican
Order. Thomas's change of heart did not please his family. In an attempt to prevent
Theodora's interference in Thomas's choice, the Dominicans arranged to move Thomas to
Rome, and from Rome, to Paris. However, while on his journey to Rome, per Theodora's
instructions, his brothers seized him as he was drinking from a spring and took him back
to his parents at the castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano.
Thomas was held prisoner for about one year in the family castles at Monte San
Giovanni and Roccasecca in an attempt to prevent him from assuming the Dominican
habit and to push him into renouncing his new aspiration. Political concerns prevented
the Pope from ordering Thomas's release, which had the effect of extending Thomas's
detention.Thomas passed this time of trial tutoring his sisters and communicating with
members of the Dominican Order. Family members became desperate to dissuade
Thomas, who remained determined to join the Dominicans. At one point, two of his
brothers resorted to the measure of hiring a prostitute to seduce him. According to legend
Thomas drove her away wielding a fire iron. That night two angels appeared to him as he
slept and strengthened his determination to remain celibate.

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Diego Velzquez, Aquinas is girded by angels with a mystical belt of purity after his proof of
chastity

By 1244, seeing that all of her attempts to dissuade Thomas had failed, Theodora
sought to save the family's dignity, arranging for Thomas to escape at night through his
window. In her mind, a secret escape from detention was less damaging than an open
surrender to the Dominicans. Thomas was sent first to Naples and then to Rome to meet
Johannes von Wildeshausen, the Master General of the Dominican Order.

Philosophy
Thomas was a theologian and a Scholastic philosopher. However, he never
considered himself a philosopher, and criticized philosophers, whom he saw as pagans,
for always "falling short of the true and proper wisdom to be found in Christian
revelation." With this in mind, Thomas did have respect for Aristotle, so much so that in
the Summa, he often cites Aristotle simply as "the Philosopher." Much of his work bears
upon philosophical topics, and in this sense may be characterized as philosophical.
Thomas's philosophical thought has exerted enormous influence on subsequent Christian
theology, especially that of the Catholic Church, extending to Western philosophy in
general. Thomas stands as a vehicle and modifier of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism.
In fact, Thomas modified both Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism by way of heavy
reliance on the Pseudo-Dionysius, which was an apologetical concoction of an earlier era.
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This source has arguably been assessed not as a communicator of tradition, but as a
polemicist, who tried to alter Neo-Platonic tradition in a novel way for the Christian
world that would make notions of complicated Divine Hierarchies more of an emphasis
than notions of direct relationship with the figure of Christ as Mediator. Indeed, a number
of Catholic sources contend that Thomas was influenced more by this concoction than
any other source, including Aristotle.

Commentaries on Aristotle
Thomas wrote several important commentaries on Aristotle's works, including On
the Soul, Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics. His work is associated with William of
Moerbeke's translations of Aristotle from Greek into Latin.

Epistemology
Thomas believed "that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs
divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act." However, he believed that
human beings have the natural capacity to know many things without special divine
revelation, even though such revelation occurs from time to time, "especially in regard to
such (truths) as pertain to faith." But this is the light that is given to man by God
according to man's nature: "Now every form bestowed on created things by God has
power for a determined actuality, which it can bring about in proportion to its own proper
endowment; and beyond which it is powerless, except by a superadded form, as water can
only heat when heated by the fire. And thus the human understanding has a form, viz.
intelligible light, which of itself is sufficient for knowing certain intelligible things, viz.
those we can come to know through the senses."

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Ethics
Thomas's ethics are based on the concept of "first principles of action." In his
Summa theologiae, he wrote:
Virtue denotes a certain perfection of a power. Now a thing's perfection is
considered chiefly in regard to its end. But the end of power is act. Wherefore power is
said to be perfect, according as it is determinate to its act.
Aquinas emphasized that "Synderesis is said to be the law of our mind, because it
is a habit containing the precepts of the natural law, which are the first principles of
human actions."
According to Aquinas "all acts of virtue are prescribed by the natural law: since
each one's reason naturally dictates to him to act virtuously. But if we speak of virtuous
acts, considered in themselves, i.e., in their proper species, thus not all virtuous acts are
prescribed by the natural law: for many things are done virtuously, to which nature does
not incline at first; but that, through the inquiry of reason, have been found by men to be
conductive to well living." Therefore, we must determine if we are speaking of virtuous
acts as under the aspect of virtuous or as an act in its species.
Thomas defined the four cardinal virtues as prudence, temperance,justice, and
fortitude. The cardinal virtues are natural and revealed in nature, and they are binding on
everyone. There are, however, three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Aquinas
also describes the virtues as imperfect (incomplete) and perfect (complete) virtues. A
perfect virtue is any virtue with charity, charity completes a cardinal virtue. A nonChristian can display courage, but it would be courage with temperance. A Christian
would display courage with charity. These are somewhat supernatural and are distinct
from other virtues in their object, namely, God:
Now the object of the theological virtues is God Himself, Who is the last end of
all, as surpassing the knowledge of our reason. On the other hand, the object of the
intellectual and moral virtues is something comprehensible to human reason. Wherefore
the theological virtues are specifically distinct from the moral and intellectual virtues.

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Thomas Aquinas wrote "Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as
much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things."
Furthermore, Thomas distinguished four kinds of law: eternal, natural, human,
and divine. Eternal law is the decree of God that governs all creation. It is, "That Law
which is the Supreme Reason cannot be understood to be otherwise than unchangeable
and eternal." Natural law is the human "participation" in the eternal law and is discovered
by reason. Natural law is based on "first principles".
. . . this is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to
be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based on this
Whether the natural law contains several precepts, or one only is explained by Aquinas,
"All the inclinations of any parts whatsoever of human nature, e.g., of the concupiscible
and irascible parts, in so far as they are ruled by reason, belong to the natural law, and are
reduced to one first precept, as stated above: so that the precepts of the natural law are
many in themselves, but are based on one common foundation."
The desires to live and to procreate are counted by Thomas among those basic
(natural) human values on which all human values are based. According to Thomas, all
human tendencies are geared towards real human goods. In this case, the human nature in
question is marriage, the total gift of oneself to another that ensures a family for children
and a future for mankind. To clarify for Christian believers, Thomas defined love as "to
will the good of another."
Concerning the Human Law, Aquinas concludes, "...that just as, in the speculative
reason, from naturally known indemonstrable principles, we draw the conclusions of the
various sciences, the knowledge of which is not imparted to us by nature, but acquired by
the efforts of reason, so to it is from the precepts of the natural law, as from general and
indemonstrable principles, that human reason needs to proceed to the more particular
determination of certain matters. These particular determinations, devised by human
reason, are called human laws, provided the other essential conditions of law be
observed...." Human law is positive law: the natural law applied by governments to
societies.
Natural and human law is not adequate alone. The need for human behavior to be
directed made it necessary to have Divine law. Divine law is the specially revealed law in
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the scriptures. Aquinas quotes, "The Apostle says (Hebrews 7.12): The priesthood being
translated, it is necessary that a translation also be made of the law. But the priesthood is
twofold, as stated in the same passage, viz, the levitical priesthood, and the priesthood of
Christ. Therefore the Divine law is twofold, namely, the Old Law and the New Law."
Thomas also greatly influenced Catholic understandings of mortal andvenial sins.
Thomas Aquinas, refers to animals as dumb and that the natural order has
declared animals for man's use. Thomas denied that human beings have any duty of
charity to animals because they are not persons. Otherwise, it would be unlawful to use
them for food. But this does not give humans the license to be cruel to them, for "cruel
habits might carry over into our treatment of human beings."
Thomas contributed to economic thought as an aspect of ethics and justice. He
dealt with the concept of a just price, normally its market price or a regulated price
sufficient to cover seller costs of production. He argued it was immoral for sellers to raise
their prices simply because buyers were in pressing need for a product.

Political order
Aquinas's theory of political order became highly influential. He sees man as a
social being that lives in a community and interacts with its other members. That leads,
among other things, to the division of labour.
Thomas thinks that monarchy is the best form of government, because a monarch
does not have to form compromises with other persons. Moreover, according to Thomas,
oligarchy degenerates more easily intotyranny than monarchy. To prevent a king from
becoming a tyrant, his political powers must be curbed. Unless an agreement of all
persons involved can be reached, a tyrant must be tolerated, as otherwise the political
situation could deteriorate into anarchy, which would be even worse than tyranny.
The kings are God's representatives in their territories. But the church, represented
by the popes, is above the kings in matters of doctrine and morality. As a consequence,
the kings and other worldly rulers are obliged to adapt their laws to the Catholic church's
doctrines and ethics. For example, the worldly authorities have to execute persons whom
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the church has sentenced to death for heresy and they have to fight and subdue groups of
heretics such as the Albigenses and Waldensians to restore the unity of the church.
Following Aristotle's concept of slavery, Thomas justifies this institution on the
grounds of natural law. Aquinas maintains that a human is a single material substance. He
understands the soul as the form of the body, which makes a human being the composite
of the two. Thus, only living, form-matter composites can truly be called human; dead
bodies are "human" only analogously. One actually existing substance comes from body
and soul. A human is a single material substance, but still should be understood as having
an immaterial soul, which continues after bodily death.
In his Summa theologiae Aquinas clearly states his position on the nature of the
soul; defining it as "the first principle of life." The soul is not corporeal, or a body; it is
the act of a body. Because the intellect is incorporeal, it does not use the bodily organs, as
"the operation of anything follows the mode of its being."
According to Thomas the soul is not matter, not even incorporeal or spiritual
matter. If it were, it would not be able to understand universals, which are immaterial. A
receiver receives things according to the receiver's own nature, so for soul (receiver) to
understand (receive) universals, it must have the same nature as universals. Yet, any
substance that understands universals may not be a matter-form composite. So, humans
have rational souls, which are abstract forms independent of the body. But a human being
is one existing, single material substance that comes from body and soul: that is what
Thomas means when he writes that "something one in nature can be formed from an
intellectual substance and a body", and "a thing one in nature does not result from two
permanent entities unless one has the character of substantial form and the other of
matter."
The soul is a "substantial form"; it is a part of a substance, but it is not a substance
by itself. Nevertheless, the soul exists separately from the body, and continues, after
death, in many of the capacities we think of as human. Substantial form is what makes a
thing a member of the species to which it belongs, and substantial form is also the
structure or configuration that provides the object with the abilities that make the object
what it is. For humans, those abilities are those of the rational animal.

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These distinctions can be better understood in the light of Aquinas's understanding

of matter and form, a hylomorphic ("matter/form") theory derived from Aristotle. In any
given substance, matter and form are necessarily united, and each is a necessary aspect of
that substance. However, they are conceptually separable. Matter represents what is
changeable about the substance what is potentially something else. For example, bronze
matter is potentially a statue, or also potentially a cymbal. Matter must be understood as
the matter of something. In contrast, form is what determines some particular chunk of
matter to be a specific substance and no other. When Aquinas says that the human body is
only partly composed of matter, he means the material body is only potentially a human
being. The soul is what actualizes that potential into an existing human being.
Consequently, the fact that a human body is live human tissue entails that a human soul is
wholly present in each part of the human.
Walter Freeman proposes that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining
cognition that is most compatible with neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal
Mind and Matter entitled "Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to
Aquinas."

Nature of God
Thomas believed that the existence of God is self-evident in itself, but not to us.
"Therefore I say that this proposition, "God exists", of itself is self-evident, for the
predicate is the same as the subject.... Now because we do not know the essence of God,
the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are
more known to us, though less known in their naturenamely, by effects."
Thomas believed that the existence of God can be demonstrated. Briefly in the
Summa theologiae and more extensively in the Summa contra Gentiles, he considered in
great detail five arguments for the existence of God, widely known as the quinque viae
(Five Ways).
1.

Motion: Some things undoubtedly move, though cannot cause their own motion.
Since, as Thomas believed, there can be no infinite chain of causes of motion,
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there must be a First Mover not moved by anything else, and this is what
everyone understands by God.
2.

Causation: As in the case of motion, nothing can cause itself, and an infinite chain
of causation is impossible, so there must be a First Cause, called God.

3.

Existence of necessary and the unnecessary: Our experience includes things

certainly existing but apparently unnecessary. Not everything can be unnecessary,
for then once there was nothing and there would still be nothing. Therefore, we
are compelled to suppose something that exists necessarily, having this necessity
only from itself; in fact itself the cause for other things to exist.

4.

Gradation: If we can notice a gradation in things in the sense that some things are
more hot, good, etc., there must be a superlative that is the truest and noblest
thing, and so most fully existing. This then, we call God

5.

Ordered tendencies of nature: A direction of actions to an end is noticed in all

bodies following natural laws. Anything without awareness tends to a goal under
the guidance of one who is aware. This we call God
Concerning the nature of God, Thomas felt the best approach, commonly called

the via negativa, is to consider what God is not. This led him to propose five statements
about the divine qualities:
1.

God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and
form.

2.

God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on
account of God's complete actuality. Thomas defined God as the Ipse Actus
Essendi subsistens, subsisting act of being.

3.

God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are
physically, intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be
distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number.

4.

God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God's essence and

character.

5.

God is one, without diversification within God's self. The unity of God is such
that God's essence is the same as God's existence. In Thomas's words, "in itself

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the proposition 'God exists' isnecessarily true, for in it subject and predicate are
the same."

Nature of Sin
Following St. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas defines sin as "a word, deed, or desire,
contrary to the eternal law." It is important to note the analogous nature of law in
Thomas's legal philosophy. Natural law is an instance or instantiation of eternal law.
Because natural law is what human beings determine according to their own nature (as
rational beings), disobeying reason is disobeying natural law and eternal law. Thus
eternal law is logically prior to reception of either "natural law" (that determined by
reason) or "divine law" (that found in the Old and New Testaments). In other words,
God's will extends to both reason and revelation. Sin is abrogating either one's own
reason, on the one hand, or revelation on the other, and is synonymous with "evil"
(privation of good, or privatio boni). Thomas, like all Scholastics, generally argued that
the findings of reason and data of revelation cannot conflict, so both are a guide to God's
will for human beings.

Nature of the Trinity

Thomas argued that God, while perfectly united, also is perfectly described by
Three Interrelated Persons. These three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are
constituted by their relations within the essence of God. Thomas wrote that the term
"Trinity" "does not mean the relations themselves of the Persons, but rather the number of
persons related to each other; and hence it is that the word in itself does not express
regard to another." The Father generates the Son (or the Word) by the relation of selfawareness. This eternal generation then produces an eternal Spirit "who enjoys the divine
nature as the Love of God, the Love of the Father for the Word."
This Trinity exists independently from the world. It transcends the created world,
but the Trinity also decided to give grace to human beings. This takes place through the
Incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ and through the indwelling of the
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Holy Spirit within those who have experienced salvation by God; according to Aidan
Nichols.
Prima causa first cause
Thomas's five proofs for the existence of God take some of Aristotle's assertions
concerning principles of being. For God as prima causa ("first cause") comes from
Aristotle's concept of the unmoved mover and asserts that God is the ultimate cause of all
things.

Nature of Jesus Christ

In the Summa Theologica Thomas begins his discussion of Jesus Christ by
recounting the biblical story of Adam and Eve and by describing the negative effects of
original sin. The purpose of Christ's Incarnation was to restore human nature by removing
the contamination of sin, which humans cannot do by themselves. "Divine Wisdom
judged it fitting that God should become man, so that thus one and the same person
would be able both to restore man and to offer satisfaction." Thomas argued in favor of
the satisfaction view of atonement; that is, that Jesus Christdied "to satisfy for the whole
human race, which was sentenced to die on account of sin."
Thomas argued against several specific contemporary and historical theologians
who held differing views about Christ. In response to Photinus, Thomas stated that Jesus
was truly divine and not simply a human being. Against Nestorius, who suggested that
Son of God was merely conjoined to the man Christ, Thomas argued that the fullness of
God was an integral part of Christ's existence. However, countering Apollinaris's views,
Thomas held that Christ had a truly human (rational) soul, as well. This produced a
duality of natures in Christ. Thomas argued against Eutyches that this duality persisted
after the Incarnation. Thomas stated that these two natures existed simultaneously yet
distinguishably in one real human body, unlike the teachings of Manichaeus
andValentinus.

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With respect to Saint Paul's assertion that Christ, "though he was in the form of
God... emptied himself" (Philippians 2:67) in becoming human, Thomas offered an
articulation of divine kenosis that has informed much subsequent Catholic Christology.
Following the Council of Nicaea, Saint Augustine of Hippo, as well as the assertions of
Scripture, Aquinas held the doctrine of divine immutability Hence, in becoming human,
there could be no change in the divine person of Christ. For Thomas The mystery of
Incarnation was not completed through God being changed in any way from the state in
which He had been from eternity, but through His having united Himself to the creature
in a new way, or rather through having united it to Himself. Similarly, Thomas explained
that Christ "emptied Himself, not by putting off His divine nature, but by assuming a
human nature." For Thomas, "the divine nature is sufficiently full, because every
perfection of goodness is there. But human nature and the soul are not full, but capable of
fullness, because it was made as a slate not written upon. Therefore, human nature is
empty." Thus, when Paul indicates that Christ "emptied himself" this is to be understood
in light of his assumption of a human nature.
In short "Christ had a real body of the same nature of ours, a true rational soul,
and, together with these, perfect Deity." Thus, there is both unity (in his one hypostasis)
and composition (in his two natures, human and Divine) in Christ.
I answer that, The Person or hypostasis of Christ may be viewed in two ways.
First as it is in itself, and thus it is altogether simple, even as the Nature of the Word.
Secondly, in the aspect of person or hypostasis to which it belongs to subsist in a nature;
and thus the Person of Christ subsists in two natures. Hence though there is one
subsisting being in Him, yet there are different aspects of subsistence, and hence He is
said to be a composite person, insomuch as one being subsists in two.
Echoing Athanasius of Alexandria, he said that "The only begotten Son of
God...assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."

Goal of human life

Thomas identified the goal of human existence as union and eternal fellowship
with God. This goal is achieved through the beatific vision, in which a person

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experiences perfect, unending happiness by seeing the essence of God. The vision occurs
after death as a gift from God to those who in life experienced salvation and redemption
through Christ.
The goal of union with God has implications for the individual's life on earth.
Thomas stated that an individual's will must be ordered toward right things, such as
charity, peace, and holiness. He saw this orientation as also the way to happiness. Indeed,
Thomas ordered his treatment of the moral life around the idea of happiness. The
relationship between will and goal is antecedent in nature "because rectitude of the will
consists in being duly ordered to the last end [that is, the beatific vision]." Those who
truly seek to understand and see God will necessarily love what God loves. Such love
requires morality and bears fruit in everyday human choices.[132]

Thoughts on afterlife and resurrection

A grasp of Aquinas's psychology is essential for understanding his beliefs around
the afterlife and resurrection. Thomas, following Church doctrine, accepts that the soul
continues to exist after the death of the body. Because he accepts that the soul is the form
of the body, then he also must believe that the human being, like all material things, is
form-matter composite. Substantial form (the human soul) configures prime matter (the
physical body) and is the form by which a material composite belongs to that species it
does; in the case of human beings, that species is rational animal. So, a human being is a
matter-form composite that is organized to be a rational animal. Matter cannot exist
without being configured by form, but form can exist without matterwhich allows for
the separation of soul from body. Aquinas says that the soul shares in the material and
spiritual worlds, and so has some features of matter and other, immaterial, features (such
as access to universals). The human soul is different from other material and spiritual
things; it is created by God, but also only comes into existence in the material body.
Human beings are material, but the human person can survive the death of the
body through continued existence of the soul, which persists. The human soul straddles
the spiritual and material worlds, and is both a configured subsistent form as well as a
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configurer of matter into that of a living, bodily human. Because it is spiritual, the human
soul does not depend on matter and may exist separately. Because the human being is a
soul-matter composite, the body has a part in what it is to be human. Perfected human
nature consists in the human dual nature, embodied and intellecting.
Resurrection appears to require dualism, which Thomas rejects. Yet, Aquinas
believes the soul persists after the death and corruption of the body, and is capable of
existence, separated from the body between the time of death and the resurrection.
Aquinas believes in a different sort of dualism, one guided by Christian scripture.
Aquinas knows that human beings are essentially physical, but physicality has a spirit
capable of returning to God after life. For Aquinas, the rewards and punishment of the
afterlife are not only spiritual. Because of this, resurrection is an important part of his
philosophy on the soul. The human is fulfilled and complete in the body, so the hereafter
must take place with souls enmattered in resurrected bodies. In addition to spiritual
reward, humans can expect to enjoy material and physical blessings. Because Aquinas's
soul requires a body for its actions, during the afterlife, the soul will also be punished or
rewarded in corporeal existence.
Aquinas states clearly his stance on resurrection, and uses it to back up his
philosophy of justice; that is, the promise of resurrection compensates Christians who
suffered in this world through a heavenly union with the divine. He says, "If there is no
resurrection of the dead, it follows that there is no good for human beings other than in
this life." Resurrection provides the impetus for people on earth to give up pleasures in
this life. Thomas believes the human who has prepared for the afterlife both morally and
intellectually will be rewarded more greatly; however, all reward is through the grace of
God. Aquinas insists beatitude will be conferred according to merit, and will render the
person better able to conceive the divine. Aquinas accordingly believes punishment is
directly related to earthly, living preparation and activity as well. Aquinas's account of the
soul focuses on epistemology and metaphysics, and because of this he believes it gives a
clear account of the immaterial nature of the soul. Aquinas conservatively guards
Christian doctrine, and thus maintains physical and spiritual reward and punishment after

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death. By accepting the essentiality of both body and soul, he allows for a heaven and
hell described in scripture and church dogma.

Modern influence
Many modern ethicists both within and outside the Catholic Church (notably
Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre) have recently commented on the possible use of
Thomas's virtue ethics as a way of avoiding utilitarianism or Kantian "sense of duty"
(called deontology). Through the work of twentieth-century philosophers such as
Elizabeth Anscombe (especially in her book Intention), Thomas's principle of double
effect specifically and his theory of intentional activity generally have been influential.
In recent years the cognitive neuroscientist Walter Freeman proposes that
Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with
neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal Mind and Matter entitled "Nonlinear
Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas."
Thomas's aesthetic theories, especially the concept of claritas, deeply influenced
the literary practice of modernist writer James Joyce, who used to extol Thomas as being
second only to Aristotle among Western philosophers. Joyce refers to Aquinas's doctrines
in Elementa philosophiae ad mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis doctoris angelici (1898) of
Girolamo Maria Mancini, professor of theology at the Collegium Divi Thomae de Urbe.
For example, Mancini's Elementa is referred to in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man.
The influence of Thomas's aesthetics also can be found in the works of the Italian
semiotician Umberto Eco, who wrote an essay on aesthetic ideas in Thomas (published in
1956 and republished in 1988 in a revised edition).

Referrences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras
http://www.biography.com/people/confucius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

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