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User:GTBacchus

2008-10-20T19:36:26Z

GTBacchus: words

I was browsing the site out of curiosity (followed a link here), and I set up an account in order to ask a question, and make a couple of minor edits. I can generally be found at Wikipedia, editing under the same name. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page, here or there!

Voltaire

2008-10-20T03:42:44Z

GTBacchus: comma

[[Image:392.jpg|right|thumb|250px]]
'''Voltaire''' (pen name of François-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778) was a leading [[French]] [[philosopher]] in the [[Enlightenment]], advocating freedom everywhere and emphasizing his form of reason. He was a [[Deism|deist]] who criticized contemporary [[Christianity]] and often [[religion]] in general. Voltaire is sometimes called the "Father of the Enlightenment."

In ''Candide'', Voltaire criticized a prevailing belief that the world was in its best possible state because it was in God's hands. To illustrate this point, he follows the story of Candide as increasingly terrible things happen to him until he loses his optimistic view of the world and his [[Christianity|faith]].

==Voltaire on Religion==

Voltaire was very critical of religion, and has been variously categorized as an [[atheist]] or an [[agnostic]], though in reality he was a [[deist]]. A death-bed admonition to a priest attempting to convert him that "Now is no time to be making new enemies" has also been misconstrued as meaning he was a [[satanist]], though evidence exists to show he was truly a [[deist]]. <ref>http://www.adherents.com/people/pv/Voltaire.html</ref> <ref>http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/volthrrck.htm</ref> <ref>http://newhumanist.org.uk/836</ref>

===Judaism and Christianity===

In his ''Philosophical Dictionary,'' he fantasizes a conversation in which he asks a spirit, implied to be [[Jesus]], "Tell me if there have been peoples other than the [[Christians]] and the [[Jews]] in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties." The spirit replies "Yes, the [[Muslim|Mohammedans]] were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them, and offered them tribute, they pardoned. As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war." Voltaire concludes by stating that he accepts Jesus as his only master, endorsing a simplified version of Christianity obeying the tenets of the Golden Rule but none of the dogma present in his era's churches. <ref>http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volrelig.html</ref>

Voltaire also erected a Church in his hometown of Ferney (now Ferney-Voltaire) with the inscription "Deo erexit VOLTAIRE" ("Erected to God by VOLTAIRE"). This further shows that Voltaire was not so much at odds with Christianity as he was with the practices associated with it during his time. <ref>http://www.quielire.fr/elections_municipales_33947_commune_de_ferney_voltaire.html</ref>

===Islam===
Regarding [[Islam]], he said, <blockquote>
"I TELL you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so many others.

Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of July, when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at any game of chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you under the same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning desert; if it were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per cent. of your income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of eighteen women, the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly, would you dare call that religion sensual?

The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the [[Greek]] Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is not worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam.

Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is easier to calumniate them.

I hate [[calumny]] so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to the [[Turkey|Turks]], although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of the arts.

I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that [[Mohammed]] speaks in his [[Koran]] of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does not say a word about it; we have proved it.

One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is always someone who resuscitates it." <ref>http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volmoham.html</ref>
</blockquote>

However, another entry in his seminal 'Philosophical Dictionary,' labeled "Reason," Voltaire has a character sharply criticize Islam:
<blockquote>"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel come down : nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who deceived imbeciles."<ref>http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volreaso.html</ref></blockquote>

==Voltaire on Democracy==
Voltaire was a strong proponent of [[democracy]] in an age when [[republican government]] was practically nonexistent and kings ruled. In a dialogue between men of all the lands of his day, they lament "that there is not one republic in all this vast part of the world", and that they long to live in "The state where only the laws are obeyed". When the [[Brahmin]] is asked where that country is, he answers, 'We must look for it'.
<ref>http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volstate.html</ref>

However, he also believed democracy would only work in a small peaceful country.

Voltaire believed that any excesses or wrongs wrought by democracies were inherently less evil or harmful than those than could be inflicted by tyrannies.
"The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.
The real vice of a civilized republic is in the [[Turkish]] fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything."

<ref> http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volstate.html</ref>

== References ==
<references/>

[[category:French Philosophers]]
[[Category:Deists]]

David Hume

2008-10-20T03:06:45Z

GTBacchus: /* Hume's Skepticism */ was this what was intended with the header levels?

[[Image:65375.jpg|right|thumb|250px|David Hume]]
'''David Hume''' (1711-1776) was a [[Scottish]] [[philosopher]] and [[historian]] who promoted empiricism and [[naturalism]] over [[spiritual]]ity. However, the ''Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy'' states the following regarding Hume: "Although many of Hume's own contemporaries were happy to label Hume an '[[atheism|atheist]]', our own contemporaries are more divided on this issue."<ref>http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/#10</ref> He was [[skeptic]]al towards [[religion]], and his major philosophical works include ''A Treatise on Human Nature'', ''An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals'', and ''Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion''. He also wrote an attack against the occurrence [http://www1.bartleby.com/37/3/14.html of miracles], though it is now believed to be somewhat [[tautology| tautological]], and the wide-ranging ''History of England'', which covered the history of [[Great Britain]] from the time of [[Julius Caesar]] to 1688. Many of his quotes have survived to this day, including "You can tell what is inside a person's soul by what comes out if it."

Hume has been criticized by many theists for his atheistic approach, and [[Charles Darwin]] declared Hume to have been his central influence, and "Darwin's bulldog" [[Thomas Henry Huxley]] admired him so much that he wrote a book about him called ''Hume''. Furthermore, Hume was denied several academic positions - such as the coveted chair of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh - possibly because he was so commonly assumed to be irreligious and much of morality was considered to come from God. One admirer of Hume was [[Adam Smith]] who, upon Hume's death in 1776, wrote the following to his friend William Strahan:

"Upon the whole, I have always considered him [Hume] both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit."

==Empiricism==

Hume is well-known for his commitment to [[empiricism]]. He believed that all meaningful ideas (beliefs, abstractions and general cognitive events) were traceable to some sense impression. For instance, according to Hume, my belief that there is a Ming vase on my dresser is meaningful if and only if that belief depends upon my having sensed such an object at that location. If I cannot find some sense perception of that object, according to Hume, I have no justification for my belief and should abandon it.

Thus, most of his writings on epistemology and metaphysics are searches for the impressions that would justify our beliefs about the way the world is.

==Hume's Skepticism==

===Causation===

Writing about [[metaphysics]], Hume charges most [[philosopher]]s with logical incontinence. He attacks the metaphysical principle of causation (the view that causal laws are necessary relations between events), arguing that there could be no sense impressions that would justify such a belief. All that we may infer from our senses are that certain events are "constantly conjoined." But the constant conjunction of X and Y does not logically imply a necessary connection between X and Y. For instance, we have always seen the sun rise in the morning, but we cannot show that it must do so tomorrow. For all we know, it shall not.

It is important to note that Hume is not a radical skeptic. He is not worried that the sun shall not rise tomorrow; rather, he is simply remarking on our inability to have absolute certainty about the world based solely on our empirical observations of it.

===Enduring Objects===

We tend to believe that some objects endure over time and exist regardless of whether or not we currently perceive them. But, as Hume notes, if we are empiricists we cannot trace that belief to any impressions: it is a logical contradiction to say that we might have sense impressions of objects we do not perceive (a "perception" is the same thing as a sense impression). Thus, our belief in the endurance of objects seems to be a fiction. Again, however, it is important to note that Hume does not claim that objects have no existence external to the mind, or that objects do not in fact endure. Hume is just reminding us that we cannot claim to be certain of it.

==Influence on Kant==

Hume's work had an immediate influence on the German philosopher [[Immanuel Kant]], whose Critique of Pure Reason was in some respects a response to Hume's empiricism. Drawing on Hume's observations about the limits of the human mind (specifically, the limitations on how it perceives reality), Kant claimed that Hume's empiricism leads to idealism - the view that some or all objects only have existence in the mind. Kant reverses this skeptical claim, arguing that the categories of spatial position, time and objectivity are imposed by the mind on our perceptions in order that we may make sense of them. He called this view transcendental idealism because, from the standpoint of the observer, this type of idealism necessitates the truth of our empirical claims relating to the categories he included in the reversal. In other words, because the category of "space" is a cognitive construct, we may make claims about the spatial relations of objects with certainty because the relations we are describing are nothing more or less than our ideas of them.

==References==

Hume, David. A Treatise on Human Nature
Smith, Adam. "Letter to William Strahan" November 9, 1776

<References/>

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[[category:Philosophers]]
[[Category:Scottish People]]