6.3 Social and Political Philosophy

Political philosophy considers the problems of governing the actually existing state, methods of influence of people’s life, methods of political straggle.

Nicolo Machiavelli: death primarily with political arts and the theory of war. The wanted to look at the state and management of diplomacy and was from the point of view of the most efficient methods. He proceeded from submission of moral to politics

Thomas Moore: whose famous work utopia, stated the liquidation of private in his ideal state.

Thomaso Kampanela: in his work “The sun city”, he described an ideal state very similar to Moore’s utopia. He suggested that everyday should combine labor with education in particularly education children.

7. Philosophy of Modern Ages (17th-18th cen)

• Empiricism – English philosophy of the 17^th cen (Francis Bacon, Hobbes and John Lock

• Rationalism – European philosophy of the 17^th cen (Descartes, Spinoza, Leipniz)

• French Philosophy of the 18^th cen – Enlightenment Encyclopedic and mechanical materialism.

The main peculiarities of the modern age philosophy are:

• Philosophy was guided by science. It was inseparably linked with knowledge taken from experience practice. The importance of scientific awareness was growing.

• The problems of epistemology ( gnoseology ) in a new philosophy because as important as antology problems

• Conflict between empiricism and rationalism were the mam stream of 17^th cen. European philosophy manifested rationalism and English philosophy manifested empiricism. These 2 positions tended to the development of science from each character of science, defined man tenderness of modern age thinking. The empiricist is a philosophical position which absolutisizes sensual cognition and regards that all knowledge is derived from sensation. In empiricism actual world is taken as the source of sensation.

Francis Bacon ( 17thcen)

• He worked to create a complete classification of existing science and new philosophy of nature.

• He wanted to see science separated from philosophy and both from religion

• He considered that inductive logic is the main method of science

Thomas Hobbes (17 cen)

• He professed materiakism

• He explained everything on the basis of mechanistic principles

• He rejected the most traditional philosophy concepts as useless abstractions.

• His philosophy was devoted to ascertaining the laws of motion

• He considered science to be based on sense experience

John Lock (17 cen)

• He claimed that our knowledge is obtained purely from sense experience and is refined by reflecting upon the things that affect the senses

• Lock, compared the mind to a blank state on which experience makes and leaves it mark.

Disadvantages of empiricism

• The exuberating of the importance and role of sensation is epistemology

• The under-estimation of the value of obstraction in the theory of knowledge

• Denying of the activeness independence of thinking.