Chapter 3: Knowledge The Battle in Europe after Kant: Relativism and Absolutism Introducing Philosophy, 10th edition Robert C. Solomon, Kathleen Higgins,

Chapter 3: KnowledgeThe Battle in Europe after

Kant: Relativism and Absolutism

Introducing Philosophy, 10th editionRobert C. Solomon, Kathleen Higgins,

and Clancy Martin

Hegel (1770-1831)

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel• German philosopher• During the age of Napoleon, wrote

his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), which was the single most-powerful influence in European philosophy—after Kant’s works—for the next hundred years

• Argued there are many different views of the world; none of them should be thought to be wholly correct or incorrect in exclusion of the others, but these various views could still be compared and evaluated according to a “dialectic,” in which some views are shown to be more developed, more inclusive, and more adequate than others

New Theory of Truth and Consciousness

• Rejects many key metaphors that have ruled modern philosophy, especially “correspondence” metaphors

• A holistic worldview in which consciousness and the world are not separate but rather are inseparably integrated; there is no world apart from consciousness

• Consciousness and the self [AU1: singular is for compound predicate?]is not essentially a feature of the individual

• The truth “is the whole”—that is, the unity of all of our consciousnesses and the world

• There is no saying what the world might be apart from our conceptions of it

• This does not invite skepticism because the world is nothing but the synthesis of all possible conceptions of it

Absolute Idealism

• Reality is the product of mind—the cosmic mind, Spirit

• Hegel rejects the division of reality (introduced by Kant) into forms of intuition and categories

• He provides a series of possible conceptions of the world—or forms of consciousness

Absolute Idealism

• These forms of consciousness emerge from one another by way of improvement or opposition, and there is always the necessary sense that they are moving toward a final end—the correct view, or “absolute knowing”

Dialectic

• Truth is not static but rather develops, as the human mind develops

• Truth is not being but rather becoming

• Knowledge develops through conflict: a dialectic

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• German philosopher and social theorist who formulated the philosophical basis for one of the most cataclysmic political ideologies of the twentieth century

• Received a doctorate in philosophy but could not teach in Germany because of his radical views

• Spent most of his life abroad, developing his theories and writing for various journals and newspapers

• His savage attacks on established beliefs and advocacy of revolution were constant throughout his life and forced him into exile

• As a young man, Marx wrote a devastating critique of G. W. F. Hegel, whom he had studied and followed as a young student and whose concept of “dialectic” he used in developing a social-political philosophy of class conflict and economic determination

• Marx thought that Hegel had turned the dialectic of history upside down

• It is not ideas that determine world history but rather the details of history that determine ideas

• From this notion of dialectic Marx developed his view of history as class conflict, replacing Hegel’s abstract “forms of consciousness” with the day-to-day battles of wages, jobs, and profits

Spirit and God• Spirit is God, but the concept

embraces all of humanity, history, and nature as well; because the world itself develops and changes, what is true for one generation may become inadequate to the next

• But this is not relativism because we are approaching an ever-more-adequate conception of a truth that Hegel calls Freedom

• Freedom is God’s purpose developing through history and humanity

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

• German philosopher, famous pessimist, and man of letters; his main work, The World as Will and Idea, was an elaboration on Kant’s philosophy

• Irrationality of the will became the centerpiece of Schopenhauer’s philosophy

• The book was first published in 1819 but did not become popular and earn its author the fame he much desired until the second half of the nineteenth century

Will and Illusion

• Elaborates on Kant’s central idea, the distinction between the constituted world of our experience and an underlying reality, which could be found in the realm of the Will

• Disagrees with Kant’s confidence in the truth of the world of our experience

Will and Illusion

• Invoking the Buddhist conception of the “veil of Maya,” Schopenhauer declares our experience of the world to be largely illusion; meanwhile, the Will, which Kant takes to be rational, becomes an irrational, impersonal, inner force in Schopenhauer

Will and Suffering

• The most evident manifestation of the Will is sexual desire, the urge to reproduce

• Schopenhauer, like the Buddha, stresses the futility of desire, and his philosophy aims at giving us relief from the Will, especially through the power of art

• But the Will is ultimate reality, and within its purposeless striving dwell all of humanity and nature

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

• German philosopher who declared himself the archenemy of traditional morality and Christianity and spent much of his life writing polemics against them; his most vicious attack is in his book, Antichrist (1888)

• Although he is generally known as an immoralist (a name he chose for himself), Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is actually an attack on one conception of morality in order to replace it with another

• The morality he attacks is the morality of traditional Christianity as defined by Kant

• The morality he seeks to defend is the ancient morality of personal excellence, as defined by Aristotle

• Nietzsche refers to the former as “slave morality,” suggesting that it is suitable only for the weak and servile, and to the latter as “master morality,” suggesting that it is the morality of the strong and independent few

Nietzsche on Truth and Relativism

• Attacks the traditional notions of truth and argued that there can be as many equally “true” worldviews as there are creative people and societies

• Rationality begins to feel the threat of relativism: not only is truth out the window, but also coherence and pragmatism are forced to take second place

Nietzsche on Truth and Relativism

• A paradox: truth is error• Emphasis on excitement, adventure,

heroism, creativity, and what Nietzsche generally calls the will to power

Wilhelm Dilthey and Historicism

• Dilthey’s historicism: truth and rationality are relative to particular peoples at particular times in history, and overall comparison of them, with the intention of finding out which is “true,” is totally mistaken

• The apparent relativistic character of historicism provoked a reaction in the form of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl