Ethical Theories: Kant vs. Hume
Comparison: Kant and Hume
It is interesting to compare Kant’s ethical formalism with Hume’s ethical emotivism. Although they were two Enlightenment thinkers, the differences between them (one German and one English) are notable.
Hume’s Empiricism
Hume’s empiricism led him to believe that reason was not the foundation of morality, as most philosophers had hitherto taken for granted. According to Hume, our rational capacity cannot tell us what is good and bad because “reason is the slave of passions.
Read MoreThomas Aquinas: Ethics, Politics, Faith, and Reason
Thomas Aquinas: Ethics and Politics
Ethics
Saint Thomas leaned on various concepts previously proposed by Aristotle:
- The concept of nature as the foundation of ethics. Considering that human happiness is the aim and objective of ethical and political science. According to Aristotle, happiness is the activity most consistent with the nature of man itself. Saint Thomas, as a theologian, explains the life of the blessed soul. The essence of happiness is the beatific vision, which is the direct contemplation
Marxist Theory: Capital, Labor, and Social Structures
Capital
Marx believes that capital dominates the operating conditions of modern society. The critique of political economy is the fundamental starting point for understanding how the relations of domination between classes, the proletariat and the capitalists, work.
Capital, in common parlance, has the economic significance of loans and interest; capital can earn higher wealth.
In respect of capital, work creates the product and makes capital, making it grow and accumulate.
Therefore, economic capital
Read MoreJohn Stuart Mill on Liberty: Thought, Individuality, and Society
John Stuart Mill’s Concept of Social and Civil Freedom
The study is not of free will but of social and civil freedom, namely, the nature and limits of power that society can legitimately exercise over the individual. Mill denounces the dangers of a democratic society: public opinion and the tyranny of the majority. Social relations should be governed by a simple principle that justifies the intervention of society in their own freedom of protection and prevents harm to others. Each person is sovereign
Read MorePre-Socratic Philosophers: Shaping Western Thought
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus is not known through preserved fragments of his original writings. His profile suggests he was a great observer of nature, and he is held to have given ideas to his fellow citizens that served to interpret natural phenomena. His activities can be described as scientific rather than philosophical. He made a series of statements that were regarded as philosophical. According to his theory, water is the principle of everything. He stated that water is the source of
Read MoreImmanuel Kant’s Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment
Immanuel Kant’s Life and the Dawn of Enlightenment
**Immanuel Kant** was born in 1724 in Prussia. He died in 1804. Coming from a modest family of pietistic confession, Kant began teaching in 1775. He had a strong conception of duty and a pedagogical sense that led him not to teach thoughts but to teach *how* to think. After years of teaching, he showed interest in the search for a new foundation for metaphysics, based on experience. This reading gave direction to a change in his investigations. In
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