Thomas Hobbes: English Philosopher and Political Theorist
Thomas Hobbes: English Philosopher and Political Theorist
Thomas Hobbes: English Philosopher and Political Theorist
Thomas Hobbes
English philosopher and political theorist
The English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes was one of the central
figures of political thought behind the British Empire. His major work, "Leviathan,"
published in 1651, expressed his idea that basic human motives are selfish.
Thomas Hobbes.
Childhood
Born prematurely on April 5, 1588, when his mother heard of the coming invasion of
the Spanish Armada (a fleet of Spanish warships), Thomas Hobbes later reported that
"my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." His father, also named Thomas
Hobbes, was the vicar (a clergyman in charge of a church) of Westport near
Malmesbury in Gloucestershire, England. After being involved in a fight with another
clergyman outside his own church, the elder Thomas Hobbes was forced to flee to
London, England, leaving his wife, two boys and a girl behind.
Thomas was then raised and educated by an uncle and studied at the local schools. By
the age of six he was studying Latin and Greek. Also at this time, Hobbes became
absorbed in the classic literature of ancient Greece. From 1603 to 1608 he studied at
Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was bored by the philosophy of Aristotelianism
(studying the works of Aristotle, a fourth-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher).
His philosophy
The questions Hobbes posed to the world in the seventeenth century are still relevant
today, and Hobbes still maintains a strong influence in the world of philosophy. He
challenged the relationship between science and religion, and the natural limitations of
political power.
The diverse intellectual paths of the seventeenth century, which are generically called
modern classical philosophy, began by rejecting authorities of the past—especially
Aristotle and his peers. Descartes, who founded the rationalist tradition, and Sir Francis
Bacon (1561–1626), who is considered the originator of modern empiricism (political
theory regarding the British Empire), both sought new methods for achieving scientific
knowledge and a clear conception of reality.
Hobbes was fascinated by the problem of sense perception, and he extended Galileo's
(1564–1642) mechanical physics into an explanation of human cognition (process of
learning). He believed the origin of all thought is sensation, which consists of mental
images produced by the pressure of motion of external objects. Thus Hobbes
anticipated later thought by explaining differences between the external object and the
internal image. These sense images are extended by the power of memory and
imagination. Understanding and reason, which distinguish men from other animals, are
a product of our ability to use speech.
Early Years
Ayn Rand was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum
on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The oldest daughter of Jewish parents (and eventually an avowed atheist), she spent
her early years in comfort thanks to her dad's success as a pharmacist, proving a
brilliant student.
In 1917, her father's shop was suddenly seized by Bolshevik soldiers, forcing the family
to resume life in poverty in the Crimea. The situation profoundly impacted young Alissa,
who developed strong feelings toward government intrusion into individual livelihood.
She returned to her city of birth to attend the University of Petrograd, graduating in
1924, and then enrolled at the State Institute for Cinema Arts to study screenwriting.
Granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago, Alissa left for the United States in early
1926, never to look back. She took on her soon-to-be-famous pen name and, after a
few months in Chicago, moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter.
Rand's ideas became even more explicit with the 1957 publication of Atlas Shrugged. A
massive work of more than 1,000 pages, Atlas Shruggedportrays a future in which
leading industrialists drop out of a collectivist society that exploits their talents,
culminating with a notoriously lengthy speech by protagonist John Galt. The novel drew
some harsh reviews, but became an immediate best seller.
Rand soon honed her philosophy of what she termed "Objectivism": a belief in a
concrete reality, from which individuals can discern existing truths, and the ultimate
moral value of the pursuit of self interest. The development of this system essentially
ended her career as a novelist: In 1958, the Nathaniel Branden Institute formed to
spread her message through lectures, courses and literature, and in 1962, the author
and her top disciple launched The Objectivist Newsletter. Her books during this period,
including For the New Intellectual (1961) and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966),
were primarily comprised of previously published essays and other works.
Rand was working on a television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged when she died of heart
failure at her home in New York City on March 6, 1982.
Legacy
Although she weathered criticism for her perceived literary shortcomings and
philosophical arguments, Rand undeniably left her mark on the Western culture she
embraced. In 1985, Peikoff founded the Ayn Rand Institute to continue her teachings.
The following year, Braden's ex-wife, Barbara, published a tell-all memoir, The Passion
of Ayn Rand, which later was made into a movie starring Helen Mirren.
Interest in Rand's works resurfaced alongside the rise of the Tea Party movement
during President Barack Obama's administration, with leading political proponents
like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz proclaiming their admiration for the author. In 2010, the
Ayn Rand Institute announced that more than 500,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged had
been sold the previous year.
Early Life
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904,
in the small town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, where
he also grew up. His father was a lawyer and his mother
stayed home to care for Skinner and his younger
brother. At an early age, Skinner showed an interest in
building different gadgets and contraptions.
As a student at Hamilton College, B.F. Skinner developed a passion for writing. He tried
to become a professional writer after graduating in 1926, but with little success. Two
years later, Skinner decided to pursue a new direction for his life. He enrolled at
Harvard University to study psychology.
Final Years
In his later years, B.F. Skinner took to chronicling his life and research in a series of
autobiographies. He also continued to be active in the field of behavioral psychology—
field he helped popularize. In 1989, Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia. He
succumbed to the disease the following year, dying at his home in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on August 18, 1990.
While many of his behavioral theories have fallen out of favor, Skinner's identification of
the importance of reinforcement remains a critical discovery. He believed that positive
reinforcement was a great tool for shaping behavior, an idea still valued in numerous
settings including schools today. Skinner's beliefs are still being promoted by the B.F.
Skinner Foundation, which is headed by his daughter, Julie S. Vargas.
During Gandhi’s first stay in London, from 1888 to 1891, he became more committed to
a meatless diet, joining the executive committee of the London Vegetarian Society, and
started to read a variety of sacred texts to learn more about world religions.
Living in South Africa, Gandhi continued to study world religions. “The religious spirit
within me became a living force,” he wrote of his time there. He immersed himself in
sacred Hindu spiritual texts and adopted a life of simplicity, austerity, fasting and
celibacy that was free of material goods.
In 1932, Gandhi, at the time imprisoned in India, embarked on a six-day fast to protest
the British decision to segregate the “untouchables,” those on the lowest rung of India’s
caste system, by allotting them separate electorates. The public outcry forced the
British to amend the proposal.
Gandhi’s Assassination
In the late afternoon of January 30, 1948, the 78-year-old Gandhi, weakened from
repeated hunger strikes, clung to his two grandnieces as they led him from his living
quarters in New Delhi’s Birla House to a prayer meeting. Hindu extremist Nathuram
Godse, upset at Gandhi’s tolerance of Muslims, knelt before the Mahatma before pulling
out a semiautomatic pistol and shooting him three times at point-blank range. The
violent act took the life of a pacifist who spent his life preaching nonviolence. Godse
and a co-conspirator were executed by hanging in November 1949, while additional
conspirators were sentenced to life in prison.
At the age of 13, Mahatma Gandhi wed Kasturba Makanji, a merchant’s daughter, in an
arranged marriage. In 1885, he endured the passing of his father and shortly after that
the death of his young baby. In 1888, Gandhi’s wife gave birth to the first of four
surviving sons. A second son was born in India 1893; Kasturba would give birth to two
more sons while living in South Africa, one in 1897 and one in 1900.
Although Gandhi was interested in becoming a doctor, his father had hoped he would
also become a government minister, so his family steered him to enter the legal
profession. In 1888, 18-year-old Gandhi sailed for London, England, to study law. The
young Indian struggled with the transition to Western culture.
Upon returning to India in 1891, Gandhi learned that his mother had died just weeks
earlier. He struggled to gain his footing as a lawyer. In his first courtroom case, a
nervous Gandhi blanked when the time came to cross-examine a witness. He
immediately fled the courtroom after reimbursing his client for his legal fees.
Legacy
Even after Gandhi’s assassination, his commitment to nonviolence and his belief in
simple living — making his own clothes, eating a vegetarian diet and using fasts for
self-purification as well as a means of protest — have been a beacon of hope for
oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world. Satyagraha remains one of
the most potent philosophies in freedom struggles throughout the world today, and
Gandhi’s actions inspired future human rights movements around the globe, including
those of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and Nelson
Mandela in South Africa.
Nationality German
Erich was born on March 23, 1900, in Frankfurt. He was the only child of Orthodox
Jewish parents. In 1918, he started his upper academic studies. He started with two
semesters of jurisprudence at the University of Frankfurt. In 1919, during the summer
semester, Erich studied as University of Heidelberg.
He started learning sociology with the aid of Alfred Weber, K. Jaspers, and Heinrich
Rickert. In the year 1922, he received his own PhD from Heidelberg. After this, he
trained to be a psychoanalyst in Heidelberg. He started his own research institute in
1930 and later completed his psychoanalytical studies.
His most popular work was called The Art of Loving. This was an international bestseller
that was first published in 1956. The book outlined theoretical principles of the human
nature that was found in his first two books. These principles were actually revisited in
most of his other major works.
While studying for his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg, Fromm studied the
Tanya, which is a Jewish code from the 16th century, by the founder of Chabad. He
also studied under Nehemia Nobel while still studying in Frankfurt. The cornerstone of
Erich’s humanist philosophy is an interpretation of the famous biblical story of the first
people on the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve.
He stated that being in a position to distinguish between good and evil is simply
considered a virtue. He extolled the different virtues of humans by taking several
independent actions and then using reason to create moral values instead of adhering
to the authoritarian moral values.
Erich believed freedom was a great aspect of the human nature that can either be
embraced or escaped from. He observed that when we embrace freedom of will, then
this is healthy. However, if we escape freedom through the escape mechanisms, then
conflicts would arise, according to Fromm.
Eric Fromm is best known for his book Escape from Freedom in which he focused on
the human need to seek a good source of authority and control upon attaining freedom,
which he believed to a person’s true desire. In the book, he found favor with lack of
rigid structure, individual freedom, and obligations that the members of medieval
society were required to do.
In the early 1960s, Erich Fromm published two books that dealt with Marxist thought.
They were Marx’s Concept of Man and Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter
with Marx and Freud. In 1965, he published a number of articles called Socialist
Humanism. A year later, in 1966, he was named Humanist of the Year by the American
Humanist Association.
Herbert Marcuse
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER
Herbert Marcuse, (born July 19, 1898, Berlin,
Germany—died July 29, 1979, Starnberg, West
Germany [now Germany]), German-born American
political philosopher and prominent member of
the Frankfurt School of critical social analysis, whose Marxist and Freudian theories of
20th-century Western society were influential in the leftist student movements of the
1960s, especially after the 1968 student rebellions in Paris and West Berlin and at New
York City’s Columbia University.
Marcuse studied at the University of Freiburg, where he was awarded a doctoral
degree in German literature in 1922. After working as a bookseller in Berlin, he returned
to Freiburg in 1928 to study with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), under whose direction
he completed his habilitation thesis, Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of
Historicity(1932). After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Marcuse joined the Frankfurt-
based Institute for Social Research—whose members later came to be known
collectively as the Frankfurt School—in its new location in Geneva. In 1934 he followed
the Institute to Columbia University. Marcuse published several outstanding
philosophical essays in the Institute’s journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for
Social Research), during the 1930s and a second major study of Hegel, Reason and
Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Modern Social Theory , in 1941. Having become a
naturalized U.S. citizen in 1940, he served as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Office
of Strategic Services (the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency) from 1941 to
1944. After the war, he headed the Central European Section of the Office of
Intelligence Research. From 1951 he taught at Columbia and Harvard universities (to
1954), Brandeis University (1954–65), and the University of California, San
Diego (1965–76), where after retirement he was honorary emeritus professor
of philosophy until his death.
One-Dimensional Man was widely read, especially among the New Left, and its
success helped to transform Marcuse from a relatively unknown university professor to
a prophet and father figure of the burgeoning student anti-war movement. He lectured
widely to anti-war activists, praising their resistance but also cautioning them about the
historical limitations of their movement: they were not the modern equivalent of the
proletariat in classical Marxist theory. Marcuse further developed his views on the scope
and limits of alternative politics in An Essay on Liberation (1969) and Counterrevolution
and Revolt (1972).
CONDUCTOR, SONGWRITER, PIANIST
(1882–1971)