dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
People and ideas systems
Clicking on a theorist's date of birth will take you to that date on timeline. If the timeline has one of the theorist's works highlighted in colour, clicking on that will take you to web resources by and about the theorist. Not all these links are in place yet.
From our culture we inherit systems of ideas that help us
(speculatively) to interpret the world. One of the purposes of
Universities
is to be academic communities where people develop and test
these idea
systems.
We are often unable to explain the basis of the common
sense
theories we use, but the
academic
community
seeks to reveal the
axioms
or
first principles
on which systems of ideas
are built.
Theory Constrains Us
One of the features of any theory is that it constrains
one.
If you adopt a theory because it explains a certain part of
reality, you
have to accept its consequences for other parts.
A
state of nature theorist
might create a theory to explain politics. As the theory is
based on a
description of basic human nature, it will have consequences
for other
parts of the human reality. For example, it will
have consequences for our theories to explain gender
differences, and for
our theories to explain family relations.
Studying state of nature theorists gives you an
opportunity to develop
your skills in handling and developing theories that apply to
many
different areas of human reality. In reading about
Hobbes
and
Locke,
for example,
imagine how what they say about politics would apply to the
relations
within a family.
|
Aristotle born about 384BC, died 322BC Greek philosopher. Aristotle argued that men and women have different kinds of reason. A man's reason fits him for government, a women's reason fits her for domestic life. Compare with his tutor, Plato |
|
|
Anthony Ashley Cooper Lord Ashley until 1851 7th Earl of Shaftesbury from 1851 Born 1801, died 1885 |
Conservative theorist and politician who worked with the working class movement in the 1830s and 1840s as a factory reformer. In 1832 he agreed to be the representative in parliament of the campaign to limit the work children could do in factories to 10 a day. The 1842, Coal Mines Act, which he piloted through the House of Commons, stopped women, and children under thirteen, from working underground.
Ashley's policies are an example of the paternalism (theory of dependence and protection) that Mill and Taylor criticised, and of the feudal socialism that Marx and Engels criticised.
Cesare Beccaria
Born 15.3.1738, died 1794
See outline of Classical Criminology and Beccaria on the Crime Timeline
Beccaria reasoned that modern man
Will commit a crime if sure he can
Escape conviction and get richer
(A little crude but you get the picture)
Lombroso took a different view
Believing that most crime was due
Not to individuals making rational choices
But rather responding to biological forces.
David Porteous BA, MA
Programme Leader MA Criminology
Middlesex University
|
Jeremy Bentham
Born 1748, died 1832 An attorney's son, born in London. From 1763 Bentham studied law at Lincoln's Inn, but never practised. He was interested in the theory of law. |
crime
|
| In 1776 Bentham published A Fragment on Government. This criticised a passage in Blackstone's Commentaries. William Blackstone (1723- 1780) saw the English law embodying the collective wisdom of the society. Bentham descibed this a "fiction" - a set of ideas hiding the true motives of those who proclaimed them. The scientific study of law should be based on the understanding that humans pursue happiness and aviod pain. |
|
| From 1785 to 1788, Bentham travelled on the Continent, including Russia. He formed the idea that he could become the Newton of morals and legislation. From 1787 to 1811 he was engaged in promoting the construction of an institution for remodelling human behaviour: The Panopticon |
|
Bentham held that:
- laws should be socially useful and not merely reflect the status quo;
- that human beings pursue pleasure and avoid pain;
- that desires may be broadly classified into self- and other- regarding
- that the function of law is to award punishment and
rewards to maintain
a just balance between them.
(Chambers Biography)
timeline, notes and texts
external link to Wikipedia articles on: William Blackstone and Jeremy_Bentham
other weblinks
Henry Peter Brougham
Born 1778, died 1868
Founder of the Social Science Association in 1857. Brougham was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review in 1802. He moved to London in 1805 and became a barrister in 1808. He became a member of Parliament in 1810 and carried an Act that made it illegal to participate in the slave trade. He was the defence counsel for the Hunts when they were tried (in December 1812) for libelling George, the Prince Regent. In 1820 he defended Queen Caroline when George (now King) tried to divorce her. In 1822 he supported an unsuccessful scheme for national education. He was a major influence on founding the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1826, and was a member of its General Committee. He was one of the founders of London University. In 1828, Brougham made a six hour speech, on which he consulted Jeremy Bentham, summarising the faults with the legal system. From November 1830 to December 1835, Brougham was Lord Chancellor. A commission intended to codify the criminal law, was appointed in 1833. Brougham was not an uncritical follower of Bentham, but he says that "the age of law reform and the age of Jeremy Bentham" were the same thing, and that Bentham was the "first legal philosopher" who had appeared in the world. (Leslie Stephens 1900 - external link)
Spartacus school-net
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the author of
Reflections on the French Revolution, published in
November 1790 criticised the French because
See Conservative
theory -
Social Science History Chapters
three -
four -
six -
Conservatism versus
progress -
Autumn 1793 -
"you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society and
had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising
everything that belonged to you... Respecting your forefathers, you would
have been taught to respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to
consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of lowborn
servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789... in your most
devoted submission you were actuated by a principle of public spirit ... it
was your country you worshipped in the person of your king"
(Burke. E. 1790,
par.61
|
Charles Darwin
Born 1809, died 1882 |
timeline - weblinks |
|
Thomas Henry Huxley
Born 1825 - Died 1895 |
timeline - weblinks |
Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution - that had existed for a long time. He did make a credible case that evolution operated by a process of natural selection. This helped to convince scientists that evolution could be believed in as the way the different forms of life came into being. Within science, this was very contentious for many years. In the 1890s, for example, the Linnaean Society carefully awarded its gold medal equally to scientists who supported Darwin and scientists who opposed him.
Some people argue that Darwin developed his theory of natural selection as a result of careful observation. They point to the voyages from 1831 to 1836 on which he carefully noted the way birds varied from island to island. Other people argue that he developed it as a result of theoretical speculation. They point to his reading Malthus on population in 1838
Rene Descartes
Born
1596,
died
1650
French philosopher. One of the founders of European rationalism. (Where I outline his ideas)
Descartes argued that it empirical evidence is insubstantial, but one's own existence is certain, because in order to think you must be:
"I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (cogito ergo sum), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search"
From this first principle, his reason deduced, in no more than the turning of a page, that God exists and that truth lies in clear conception.
|
John Dewey Born 20.10.1859, died 1.6.1952 |
books - weblinks - |
An American philosopher who initiated a version of Pragmatism: a philosophical concept, which evaluates thought on the basis of usefulness for practical action.
At Johns Hopkins University, John Dewey was attracted to both the biological evolution ideas of Thomas Henry Huxley, the friend of Darwin, and Hegel's, earlier, historical analysis of the evolution of ideas.
Dewey argued that it is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that theories acquire significance, and only with a theory's success in this struggle that it becomes true. He rejected abstract conceptions of "truth", and quoted Charles Sanders Peirce (1839- 1914) the founder of American pragmatism) to define what truth is to him.
"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented by this opinion is the real." (Dewey, J. 1938/Log, p. 345, quoting from volume 5, p.268 of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Pierce)
According to Dewey, the organisation of society does not grow out of ideas. For example, the American political system is not formed around the concept of democracy. It is the other way round. On the basis of changes which occur, and forms of active organisational practices, we develop ideas about community life.
In Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Dewey give this description of society:
"..society is one word, but infinitely many things. It covers all the ways in which by associating together men share their experiences, and built upon common interests and aims. (Dewey, J. 1920/RP, p. 200) "Society is the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common." (Dewey, J. 1920/RP, p. 207)
1896 - 1909 - 1916 - 1920 - 1922 - 1927 - 1930 - 1931 - 1935 -
|
Emile Durkheim
Born 15.4.1858, died 15.11.1917 |
Read the extracts from his works
books |
|
Durkheim is often thought of as the founder of sociology, the
science of
society. He developed
Rousseau's
concept that society is not the sum of its individual members,
but is a
reality in itself, based on the general will. Durkheim removed
this from
its origin in
State of Nature Theory. He
argued that
humans
are by nature social. Society is not something that came about
by
individuals joining together. We have always been part of
society. Society
is, therefore, a reality which we can study, and Durkheim's
project was to
develop the scientific study of it.
See Social Science History, chapter six: Durkheim and Weber's contrasting imaginations: Who is the Sociologist?, for a fuller discussion of the issues |
crime
|
External link to Wikipedia article on Durkheim
other weblinks
Albert Einstein
Born
1879,
died
1955
Einstein was a
theoretical physicist who created the general
theory
of relativity. This rejects an important part of
Newtonian
physics
which treats space and time as fixed dimensions that
provide a framework for all the bodies in the universe.
Instead, it considers space and time as relative to the
viewpoint of the observer and the object or process
being observed. See
proof
John Etienne Dominique
Esquirol
Born
1772,
died
1840
A student of Philippe Pinel who succeeded him as physician in chief at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris in 1811. In 1823 he became chief inspector at the University of Paris and in 1826 he was appointed chief physician at the asylum in Charenton, France. In 1838 he collected and amended his writings (from 1812) into Des maladies mentales, considées sous les rapports medédical, hygienique et médico-légal published in Paris. This was translated into English as Mental Maladies. A Treatise on Insanity in 1845 (Philadelphia). Several parts were translated individually much earlier and Esquirol's ideas were circulated in England by a number of doctors.
| Family | a part of society |
One of the reasons family is discussed by social theorists is its theoretical implication for social theory generally.
Robert Filmer, in the 17th century, and and Roger Scruton, in the 20th, for example, both construct views of society around the idea of family. Both theorists contrast the idea that "contract" is the foundation of society, with their own view that society is better understood by thinking about the relations that exist in the family, between parents and children. Scruton sees the family model as a "conservative" model and contract as the "liberal" model.
The title of Jean Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract shows that it is in the contractual, liberal camp. However he combines his contractual theory with an analysis of family bonds as the basis of society:
"The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage."
Family relations include those between adult partners as well as those between adults and children. Aristotle conceptualised the difference between these relations, but wives have often been thought of theoretically as similar to children in their relation to the male "head" of the household.
Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, two liberal theorists, argued in an 1848 essay that an authoritarian, hierarchical, paternalist relationship in which women are dependent on men is unsuitable to a modern society based on self determination. Mill elaborated on this in The Subjection of Women (1869), arguing that egalitarian families would educate people for democratic political societies.
Sigmund Freud contrasted his theories of society and human relations, based on an analysis of the unconscious mind, with the consciously rational analysis of Mill (and Taylor). Mill imagined society and family based on freely determined relations been autonomous adults, educating children in a school of freedom. Freud analysed the family as the site of deadly conflicts, conflicts that are paralleled in society and history.
One of the issues in dispute between these theorists is the nature of science. Those who support the family model against a contract model tend to argue that their model is based on analysis of what is real (a "thing" as Durkheim would say) rather than on a philosophic rationalism that relates more to what some people might want society to be then to what it is. (See the positivist distinction between science and philosophy)
History of the family: Historically the family has taken different forms. Engels argues that the study of these forms began with a German writer Bachofen in 1861. To gain an broad overview of the forms Engels suggests, see my Summary of Historical Materialism which has links to extracts from Engels.
|
William Farr
Born 1807, died 1883 |
books and weblinks |
English Statistician. Superintendent of the statistical department of the registrar-general from 1838 to 1880. He wrote many articles on medical matters before being appointed to the statistical department. Some of these were published in Thomas Wakley's journal The Lancet. Farr's article Vital Statistics was published in 1832 in MacCulloch's Account of the British Empire. Vital here means life. Farr was using statistics to study life and death. How he did so can be seen in his Report on the Mortality of Lunatics to the Statistical Society in 1841
|
Filmer claimed that the family is the natural form of government and that states are developed from it. Like Scruton today, he thought that imagining political society as a contract between people is unrealistic, and that the family is a better model for understanding political society. Filmer was an enthusiastic royalist, who wrote pamphlets in defence of the authority of the state, arguing that kings have a divine right to rule. He had a religious and a secular argument: The religious argument derives the ruler's right from Adam, the first man in the world according to the Jewish, Christian and Islamic bibles. God, according to the Bible, made Adam lord over creation and over his wife, and the ten commandments say that people should honour their parents. According to Filmer, this divine right to rule has passed down to all future kings. His secular argument is an attack on the idea that societies are constructed by us, for our own purposes. Filmer says that this is contrary to what we observe. Very little choice enters into the relations of everyday life. We accept what is already established.
|
|
Michel Foucault
Born 1926, died 1984 |
books - extracts -
weblinks -
biography
Also see timeline 1961 and Pearce |
Foucault investigates structures of ideas. He calls these structures "discourses". Examples of discourses include psychoanalysis and marxism.
He explores ideas as structures of power and as structures of discovery.
He explores how a structure of ideas, like the ideas that created institutions based on surveillance, are related to power.
He explores structures of ideas as a search for truth. He describes "truth" as a "system of ordered procedures" governing statements. Different discourses have different rules (ordered procedures) for how true statements are to be produced.
The following quotation from an essay entitled "Prison Talk" is often quoted as a summary of Foucault's argument about the relationship between knowledge and power:
"Knowledge and power are integrated with one another, and there is no point in dreaming of a time when knowledge will cease to depend on power; this is just a way of reviving humanism in a utopian guise. It is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power." (Foucault, M. 1980, p.52)
| James George Frazer 1854-1941 | books - extracts |
James Frazer's interest in anthropology was first aroused, in Easter 1883, by reading E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (published in 1871). In the autumn of 1883 he met William Robertson Smith, who became his "most intimate friend" (E. O. James, DNB 1959)
At the invitation of Robertson Smith, James Frazer contributed the articles on Taboo and Totemism to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica" (1888). He said that
"The researches I made for these articles', he explained, 'were the beginning of a systematic application to anthropology, and especially to a study of the backward races of men whom we call savages and barbarians." (quoted E. O. James, DNB 1959)
Frazer described Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, published in 1889, as marking "a new departure in the historical study of religion". (quoted E. O. James, DNB 1959)
James Frazer first published The Golden Bough: a study in comparative religion in two volumes in 1890. He expanded it to three volumes in 1900. The third edition began to be published in 1911. Extra volume appeared in 1911, 1912 and 1913, and an index volume in 1915. An aftermath volume was separately published in 1936. An abridged edition, by Frazer and his wife, was published in 1922.
|
Sigmund Freud
Born 6.5.1856, died 23.9.1939. Freud was the founder of Psychoanalysis. |
|
It started with Blanche Whittman's faints. Click the picture to read about her. |
Many theories of human nature and society make reason a central and powerful element. Freud believed that he had discovered a scientific route to a source of human conduct that underlies, and overrides, reason.
Psychoanalysis is a technique of listening to people who have relaxed their guard on what they reveal (to themselves or others) of the contents of their minds.
On the basis of what he heard from his patients, using this technique, Freud claimed that central processes of our thinking are unconscious. A consequence of this is that reason cannot be relied on. When we give a reason for something we do, we are probably making it up - because the true reason is unconscious!
If Freud's basic theories are true, we need to rethink all social theories with reason as a central component. To be scientific, all human conduct needs to be interpreted in terms of a hidden drama that Freud discovered in the human unconscious. In 1913 he wrote:
"the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex"
To explain the drama he believed relates the development of individuals and the development of societies, Freud used Greek mythology. He called a vital part of it the "Oedipus Complex" after a character in Greek myth who (unknowingly) killed his father and had sex with his mother.
According to Freud, the "performance" of this drama in our childhood, constructs our character. It is not our genitals that give us male or female personalities, but the roles we play in this drama with respect to our mother (or her equivalent) and her lover (conventionally, our father). Freud, therefore saw a distinction between male and female (personalities) as having a central effect on the content of our minds. He disagreed with those theorists (e.g. Plato, Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill) who had argued that, in almost everything except physical organs and ability to bear and breast feed children, men and women are essentially the same.
For Freud, the drama of the Oedipus Complex, revealed in psychoanalysis, explains why we accept authority. In this case, the authority of our father, but the issue is generalised to all authority. Freud argued this in his sociological writings, where he recounted a parallel anthropological myth of the slaying of the primal father and his resurrection in religious sacrament.
William Godwin
Born
1756,
died
1836
William Godwin's book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, started in 1791 published in February 1793 is intended to "philosophically place the principles of politics on an immovable basis". It begins with a summary of those principles.
Godwin was educated as a rationalist dissenter from the established church. His political theories formed the basis of anarchism. His version of anarchism being a belief that the state would become unnecessary as human beings developed their powers of moral and political self-determination.
|
Olympe de Gouges Born 1748, Died 1793 French feminist writer. |
|
Olympe de Gouges was a young widow who taught herself to
write. She
began to write in 1780 and published her memoirs in 1784. She
published her
first political pamphlet in November 1788 and numerous
political writings
followed, including her
Declaration of
the Rights of Woman.
Her vivid imagination overcame the disadvantages of her
bad spelling
and poor punctuation and her meaning forced its way through
her unorthodox
prose.
An enthusiastic writer of plays, she was also a champion
of freedom for
slaves.
In
December 1789
her play on The Slavery
of Black People was performed in a Paris theatre, but the
audience
hissed it and it had to be taken off after three performances.
She believed passionately that the philosophy of natural
freedom, that
inspired the
Declaration of the Rights of
Man,
should apply equally to every human being.
Her writings combine the image of
family
embracing the whole of humanity with that of a social contract
establishing
the law of reason for the whole of humanity. It was natural,
therefore, for
her pamphlet on the rights of women to embrace the family, the
nation as a
family, and human beings of all colours as one family.
External link to Wikipedia article on: Olympe de Gouges other weblinks
Wilhelm Griesinger
Born 1817, died 1869
German psychiatrist who argued E. H. Ackernecht's words) that:
"Normal people have many experiences analogous to states of insanity, for example in dreams, during febrile delirius and in toxic states. While dreaming and in the delirium of mental illness one reacts to bodily sensations without being aware of doing so. In both states critical faculties are lost and in both we notice the gratification of wishes which, unfulfilled in reality, had been repressed. Sleep induced by magnetism and somnambulism are also allied to states of insanity."
Georg Friedrich Hegel
Born 1770, died 1831
German Professor of Philosophy. Hegel believed that the whole of history is the development of reason, and he attempted to describe it all. His work is monumental. It incorporates all the major strands of philosophy that he was aware of, from the beginning of time to his own time. Part of the intellectual structure that he provides is an analysis of society into three components. These are (roughly speaking) the state, the economy, and the family.
Hegel's thought is frequently looked at as a background to that of Marx and Engels, but it is also of value in its own right.
Hegel and Kant and the French Revolution
timeline, notes and texts external link to Wikipedia article
Martin Heidegger
Born
1889,
died
1976
German existentialist philosopher. Heidegger had Nazi sympathies, but his wide influence has related to his philosophy, not his politics. He was a major influence on the left-wing French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.
Judith Harding has the following passage from Heidegger on her wall. It is intended to remind her that what she calls "new ways of thinking about teaching and learning" are not new. She says it reminds her that these approaches have always been part of some thinking, "from Socrates on".
-
"Teaching is more difficult than learning. We know that; but
we rarely
think about it. And why is teaching more difficult than
learning? Not
because the teacher must have a larger store of information,
and have it
always ready. Teaching is more difficult than learning because
what
teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in
fact, lets
nothing else be learned than---learning. His conduct,
therefore, often
produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from
him, if by
'learning' we now suddenly understand merely the procurement
of useful
information. The teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this
alone, that he
has still far more to learn than they---he has to learn to let
them learn.
The teacher must be capable of being more teachable than the
apprentices.
The teacher is far less assured of his ground than those who
learn are of
theirs. If the relation between the teacher and the taught is
genuine,
therefore, there is never a place in it for the authority of
the know-it-
all or the authoritative sway of the official. It still is an
exalted
matter, then, to become a teacher---which is something else
entirely than
becoming a famous professor".
|
Thomas Hobbes:
Born 1588, died 1679 Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and, to a certain extent, Wollstonecraft, all used a type of theory that we call State of Nature Theory. This tries to explain human society and culture by imagining what men and women would be like if we were not part of society: if we were "uncivilized" or "in a state of nature". Each theorist argues for different characteristics to our uncivilised, animal, natures. Consequently each theorist draws different conclusions about society and civilization. |
Robotics: "Bar Bot" (external link) is a 21st century Austrian Robot that talks to you about beer. It is driven by self-interest - a desire to drink beer. Once you have given it some money, it buys the beer, drinks the beer, and settles down to talk to you about giving it some more money to drink beer. Another Robot, or machine-human, is the more sophisticated Japanese "ifbot" (external link) (another), made by Yoshimichi Hashiba, which approaches (in some respects) the conversational skills of a five year old child. The theory behind machine- humans can be traced back to philosophical scientists such as Hobbes and Descartes
David Hume
Born 1711, died 1776
A Scottish philosopher and one of the founders of European empiricism.
Hume undermined confidence in the power of reason. He believed that all real knowledge is based on experience, but he argued that our powers to build knowledge on experience are very limited. (see What is Science?)
In the empirical tradition, reason builds on experience, and Hume's fundamental doubt about the validity of the process undermines the argument of Mary Wollstonecraft that reason is the power that is taking us, via a lot of accidents, towards an ever better future. (see What is Science?). Wollstonecraft, however, had read the German philosopher Kant, whose synthesis of the empirical and rational traditions salvaged the possibility of reliable knowledge, and with it the philosophical foundations of the belief in progress based on reason.
Hume's doubts can also be seen as opening the door for theories that explore below the surface of reason. For example, they opened the door to Freud's psychoanalysis and his theory of the unconscious.
Immanuel Kant
Born
1724,
died
1804
German philosopher who made a very influential synthesis of rationalism and empiricism. Empiricists, such as Locke and Hume, argued that all our knowledge comes from experience, or from reflection on experience. Rationalists argued that empirical knowledge is uncertain and only reason can lead us to truth.
Knowledge that comes from experience is a-posteriori This is Latin for from what comes after and just means that the knowledge comes from (after) the experience. Hume's self-critical examination of empiricism appeared to show that very little knowledge could be reliably based on experience alone. In many fields, Hume's philosophy seemed to have proved that scientific knowledge is impossible. Kant's philosophy sought to explain why science can be relied on, even if experience, alone, is an inadequate base.
Kant argued that some knowledge is prior to experience of the world - and necessary to knowledge of the world. This knowledge is called a-priori (Latin meaning from what is before). However, he showed in his Critique of Pure Reason that reason on its own can not produce reliable results. He did this by using antinomies: An antinomy is proving two contradictory things at the same time. For example: the world has a beginning and an end/ the world is infinite. Or Everything has a cause/Everything does not have a cause. If pure reason can prove contradictions it is hardly reliable.
Reason, Kant argued, provides categories with which we interpret empirical observation. Both are needed to understand the world or to build a science. These categories are mental structures like space, time and causation that we use to structure our experiences. Because we cannot experience without organising what we experience, we have to distinguish between what actually exists (the thing in itself) and what we perceive (called the phenomena). The "thing in itself" is also called noumenon (single) or noumena (plural). It is the reality behind appearances.
| Kant reasoned, however, that there is a world to which reason gives us direct access. This is the world of morality, which he calls practical reason. This is a world of freedom rather than cause. It is a world that is special to being human. The nature of being human is to be governed by reason rather than instinct. An animal is caused to do something by its instincts. The beginning of morality in humans is saying "no" to instinct. |
crime
|
Kant's idea of practical reason was developed from Rousseau's idea of the general will. It is something that comes from our being social.
"In man (as the only rational creature on earth), those natural capacities which are directed towards the use of his reason are such that they could be fully developed only in the species, but not in the individual."
Our moral freedom from instinct is not freedom to do what we please, but freedom to act according to the laws of reason that we discover.
"Reason, in a creature, is a faculty which enables that creature to extend far beyond the limits of natural instinct the rules and intentions it follows in using its various powers, and the range of its projects is unbounded. But reason does not itself work instinctively, for it requires trial, practice and instruction to enable it to progress gradually from one stage of insight to the next."
The moral laws we discover through reason are the categorical imperatives, unconditional moral obligations derived from pure reason. (the things we must do). Through his own reasoning, Kant concludes that there is one basic categorical imperative, the mother of them all:
"There is therefore but one categorical imperative, which may be thus stated: Act in conformity with that maxim, and that maxim only, which you can at the same time will to be a universal law."
James Philips Kay
Born
20.7.1804,
died
1877
Plain Kay until 1842 when he married the heiress to the Shuttleworth's of Gawthorpe and became Kay-Shuttleworth.
Born in Rochdale, Lancashire. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1824 to 1827. He worked and studied conditions in slum areas of Manchester. He helped to set up the Ancoats and Ardwick Dispensary, and became its medical officer. His well known pamphlet on The Moral And Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed In the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, grew out of work with the Manchester Board of Health. He was secretary to the Board during the cholera epidemic of 1832. In 1833 he helped establish the Manchester Statistical Society. After an unsuccessful bid to become a Chancery Visitor in April 1833, he was appointed an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner in 1835. [See Charles Mott file] On 11.4.1839 he became Assistant Secretary to the Committee of the Privy Council on Education - although effectively running it. With E.C. Tufnell, he set up The Battersea Normal School (Teacher Training) at their own risk in 1840. He retired in 1849, when he was knighted.
Frank Emmett, who is researching the career of James Kay, has provided me with much of the information I have used about Kay. See also Spartacus School Net, Cotton Times
|
Ronald Laing Born Glasgow 7.10.1927, died 23.8.1989 |
books |
Scottish Psychiatrist and existentialist. Laing was a psychiatrist who argued that "insane" statements by mentally ill people are statements that make sense if correctly interpreted. He believed that the thought processes that psychiatrists call "schizophrenic" are the result of people being subjected to a particular form of self contradictory dialogue within their family. Laing's theories became part of a left wing political criticism of the family. Laing can be usefully contrasted with Scruton.
|
David Cooper
Born Cape Town 1931, came to London 1955 |
books |
Born 1632, died 1704
John Locke was an English philosopher and one of the founders of European empiricism. His theory of knowledge is that everything in our heads ( ideas ) comes originally from observation of the real world. False ideas are the result of putting simple observations together in the wrong order. To obtain true ideas we must trace our ideas back to their original observations, to make sure that the ideas in our head hang together in the same order in reality. Reason is the power we use to trace our ideas back to their original observations. (See Locke's Essay on Understanding)
|
In his political theory, Locke was concerned to establish that
it can
be rational for subjects to protest against injustice in a
ruler.
He claimed that human beings are governed by reason before they enter into political society. This natural reason is enough to allow us to establish reasonably civilized relations without a ruler forcing his or her will upon us. When we do enter political society, it is in order more effectively to enforce the rule of reason. This law has to govern the conduct of the ruler as well as the subjects.
|
external link to Wikipedia article other weblinks
Thomas Malthus
Born 1766, died 1834
See Wealth and Poverty: Malthus and Ricardo
|
Karl Marx
Born 1818, died 1883 and Friedrich Engels Born 1820, died 1895 |
Timeline 1848 and index of
Marx and Engels resources Marx books - extracts index Engels books - extracts index |
Marx and Engels were collaborators in the production of what they saw as a scientific analysis of human history from the perspective of socialism. They described themselves as communists, and their writings are the classical texts of communism and "marxism".
As with all major theorists, there are different interpretations of their work. It is usually agreed, however, that they argued for a materialist interpretation of society and history. They used concepts about how human societies change the material world in order to exist, as the key concepts to explain everything that humans do. The key to history is an analysis of successive modes of production, and the motor that moves history is class conflict within those modes of production. The analysis of these would be a distinguishing feature of any marxist theory, whether it concerned crime, economics, psychology, music, literature, gender relations, family relations or whatever. This approach is called historical materialism.
|
|
Click weeping Stan to see what Engels' thought criminal statistics show us about the connection between crime and economics |
Some people argue that Engels distorted Marx. Whatever the truth about this, it is difficult to discuss Marx's views on gender without discussing Engels.
Towards the end of his life, Marx became interested in the
anthropological reports of Lewis Henry Morgan
(1818-1881). Morgan
argued that human society has three inter-related spheres:
production,
reproduction (i.e. the family and child rearing) and
government. Something
happening in one sphere would have repercussions for something
happening in
another.
When Marx died, Engels inherited his manuscripts, including
his
notes on Morgan. Engels developed Marx's notes on historical
materialism
and the family into a book
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State
in
1884.
This is an important book in its own right. It is also
important
because a number of modern
feminist
theorists have developed their theories
as criticisms of Engels.
In 1949, Simone De Beauvoir
started The Second Sex
by analysing
biological, psychoanalytic (Freudian) and historical
materialist (Engels)
perspectives on women, and argues that they are partial. From
her
existentialist view, biology, sex and economics cannot
determine a woman's
destiny
In 1971,
Shulamith Firestone also began with criticisms of
Engels and Freud.
The first chapter of her book The Dialectic of Sex is a
good
introduction to Engels, and I have used its chart to construct
my notes on
Engels.
The chart shows how, according to Engels, the state, the
family and the
economy change together over time. The notes
include a
description of the
tribal organisation of politics in the
Iroquois Confederation.
Engels speculates on the future relations of the genders under
communism.
William Morris was one of the (very) few marxist
socialists who has
imagined in print
what communism would be like. He did this in the novel
News
from Nowhere which he published in
1890.
"In our attempt to discover woman we shall not reject
certain contributions of biology, of psychoanalysis, and of
historical
materialism; but we shall hold that the body, the sexual life,
and the
resources of technology exist concretely for [a human being]
only in so far
as he [or she] grasps them in the total perspective of his [or
her]
existence."
Click for
Engels
spelling tips
|
Robert King Merton
Born 5.7.1910, died 2003 Extracts |
crime
|
Merton was a pupil of Talcott Parsons at Harvard University (1931). Like Parsons, he analyses society in terms of structure and function and investigates the relation between social structure and culture . Whereas Parsons concerns himself mainly with theory and with theory that explains the whole of society, Merton was most interested in theory on a smaller scale and how such theory could be developed to establish empirical relations with sociological data.
Postgraduate student and teaching assistant from 1933 to 1936 and then a tutor and instructor from 1936 to 1939 - In 1937 Merton was acknowledged by Talcott Parsons for particularly helpful suggestions and criticisms after reading his manuscript - 1938 - 1939 - 1941 - 1942 - 1949 - 1957 -
| Max Müller 1823-1900 | books |
Born in Germany, Max Müller came to England in 1846 to study the manuscript of the Rig-Veda, the sacred hymn of hinduism. This was in the possession of the East India Company. In 1847, the company commissioned Müller to edit and publish the text. Müller was appointed professor of modern languages at Oxford University in 1854. See 1861 and 1870
|
James Mill
Born 1773, died 1836 |
books |
James Mill, a shoemaker's son from Scotland who came to London in 1802. He became the disciple and chief propagandist of Jeremy Bentham from about 1808. Sometime before 1810 he also joined forces with the Quaker William Allen, cooperating with his magazine The Philanthropist, which became an important organ for utilitarian ideas. James Mill wrote the History of British India which was published in 1817 and 1818. Between 1816 and 1823 he wrote essays for the supplement of the Encyclopedia Britannica on government, law, the liberty of the press, prisons and prison discipline, colonies, the law of nations, and education. I have summarised the argument of his essay on government in Social Science History. He published the Elements of Political Economy in 1821 and 1822. In 1827 he was one of the founders of London University. In 1829 he published Analysis of the Human Mind , one of the first English text books of Psychology.
James Mill popularised the theoretical principles of Jeremy Bentham. It was James son, John Stuart Mill, who called those principles "utilitarianism". Utilitarianism is a theory with different possibilities according to how it is developed. The socialist version argued that the greatest human happiness would be obtained through cooperation. This was not James, version and, in the 1830s James Mill was the most widely read and influential of the Utilitarians. It was his version of the doctrine which most people would have recognised.
James broadened utilitarianism by linking it with other theories. He linked it to the egoistic psychology that Thomas Hobbes had developed. This argues that the foundation of any explanation of the human mind must be to trace its content back to the self-centred desires of the individual. He also linked utilitarianism to democracy, arguing that if we are all pursuing our own self-interest it is not safe to trust government to a minority. Every male adult must have a vote to act as a control on the government. He also linked it to laissez-faire economics, merging the theories of Bentham with those of Ricardo and other followers of Adam Smith.
It was the total package that James Mill put together that people often percieved as utilitarianism, but none of the links he made is a necessary one. Other utilitarians, includeing his own son, John Stuart Mill, as well as Thompson and Wheeler, made different links and constructed different versions of utilitrianism.
|
John Stuart Mill
Born 1806, died 1873 and Harriet Taylor Born 1807, died 1858 |
books |
John Stuart Mill was the son of James Mill.
Like his father, he was a utilitarian philosopher and a political economist. He was also a radical liberal politician.
John Stuart Mill's A System of Logic (1843) was one of the foundations of social science. It was written to stress the importance of deduction, reason, theory and hypothesis in science, and to explore the way they relate to empirical reality and induction.
Few people read Mill's Logic nowadays (although many condemn it without reading it), so this description may come as a surprise to some people. See proof.
Harriet
Taylor
provided the ideas for an article
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring
Classes
in a book by
John Stuart Mill
that was the
standard text book on economics in the second half of the 19th
century
(Mill, J.S. 1848).
The article argues against paternalism and for
self-determination.
Paternalism is where a benevolent, but authoritarian,
government provides
for the welfare of the people. It is the kind of policy
associated, at the
time, with people like Lord Ashley.
Mill and Taylor argued that, after the basic necessities
of life have
been met, freedom is the most important human need. Freedom
meaning, for
them, the opportunity to develop one's own life according to
one's own
values, rather than living, however comfortably, under the
control of
someone else. The working class, they argued, were rightly
taking this
power into their own hands. Women, they added, should do the
same.
In The Subjection of Women (1869), J.S. Mill argued that western society is developing from a hierarchical organisation (feudalism) to an organisation based on freedom under law. His book incorporated the ideas of the early French sociologists, St Simon and Comte, that societies are complex wholes in which legal structures, morals, customs, political, economic and family structures interrelate. The development of democracy and freedom in politics he argued, would need to be matched by a development of freedom and democracy within the family and in the relation between the sexes.
Juliet Mitchell
Psychoanalyst. Born New Zealand 1940. Lived in London
since 1944.
Many
feminist
theorists in the early 1970s criticised
Freud. Mitchell
is a feminist writer who argues that feminists like
Simone De
Beauvoir,
Betty Friedan, Eva Figes, Germaine Greer,
Shulamith
Firestone
and Kate
Millett, have created inadequate theories because they have
missed out the
essential Freud: his theory of the unconscious. Her 1974 book,
Psychoanalysis
and
Feminism, also discusses
Reich
and
Laing.
Montesquieu
Charles Secondat "Baron de Montesquieu" (l689-l755) was a French
aristocrat. He was a judge, but he sold this office to devote more of his
time to study. His two major works were the Persian Letters (1721)
and
The Spirit of the Laws (1748).
The Spirit of the Laws contains this message:
It is easy to find strange or bizarre parts to the book, but Montesquieu is
valued for the way he related elements to one another. The many parts of
the book hang together. In it he explored natural and human laws in a way
that enables us to analyse society as a whole, in relation to its parts, in
relation to its history and in relation to its environment.
"I beg one favour of my readers, ... that they will approve or
condemn the book entire, and not a few particular phrases."
Benedict Augustin Morel
Born
1809,
died
1873
Pioneer of the theory of degeneration:
"Les degenerations sont des deviations maladives du type normal de l'humanite hereditairement trans-missibles et evoluant progressivement vers la decheance." (Degenerations are deviations from the normal human type which are transmissible by heredity and which deteriorate progressively towards extinction.)
He worked on this theory from 1839 until 1857, giving it its final form in Traite des Degenerescences Physiques, Intellectuelles et Morales de I'Espece Humaine
Degeneration could be caused by intoxication, by malaria, alcohol, opium, soil conducive to cretinism, epidemics or food poisoning; the social environment; pathological temperament; moral sickness; inborn or acquired damage; or heredity. His law of two-fold fertilization stated that combined physical and moral injuries were particularly dangerous. His law of progressivity stated that the first generation of a degenerate family might be merely nervous, the second would tend to be neurotic, the third psychotic, while the fourth consisted of idiots and died out.
Morel identified changes in the head, eye, ear, genitalia and intestines which were infallible stigmata (signs) of degeneration.
Frederick Walker Mott
Born
23.10.1853,
died
8.6.1926
Asylum pathologist. From 1884 a lecturer in physiology at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. Appointed in 1895 to run the London County Council Asylums' new Central Laboratory at Claybury. He also remained a lecturer at Charing Cross.
Pathology (1900 dictionary) explains the nature, causes and symptoms of diseases and a laboratory is a building or room designed for investigation and experiment. The microscope is usually considered as the scientific apparatus that made the laboratory study of disease important. Its uses included looking for tiny life forms that might generate disease and taking a close look at body tissues. A central laboratory for asylums would be concerned with diseases that were associated with asylums. Mott investigated the possible relation that both psychosis and neurosis might have to the body. But there were other diseases associated with asylums: "epidemic disorders, such as dysentery". "Asylum dysentery" or "asylum colitis" covered a variety of gastrointestinal infections to which the patients in asylums seemed particularly prone. (See Claybury)
Mott and Durham (1900) investigated the theory that asylum colitis was due to the degeneration of the nervous tissue of insane people leading to tissue damage in the inte