A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern PhilosophyCushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy
A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy
Cushman, Herbert Ernest
Philosophy -- History
10 – Read Ball, _Hist. of Math._, pp. 253 ff.; Höffding, _Hist.
of Mod. Phil._, vol. i, pp. 184–186; Macaulay, _Essay on
Bacon_; Bacon, _Essays_,――_Studies, Truth, Friendship,
Simulation, and Dissimulation_; Abbott, _Francis Bacon_;
Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 336–344; Rand,
_Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 24–56.
11 – Bacon wrote his _New Atlantis_ in 1623. The same year
Campanella wrote his _State of the Sun_, and the preceding
year Thomas More wrote his _Utopia_.
12 – Utilitarianism regards adaptation to general happiness
as the ideal of society. Positivism, broadly used, is
that philosophy which limits the scope of thought to
the observation of facts, although the observations are
inferior to the facts. The data and methods of positivism
are the same as those of natural science, and opposed to
the _a priori_ methods of metaphysics.
13 – In this connection read Herbert Spencer, _Education_.
14 – Bacon chooses the word Idols, because it is the same as
the Greek word for false forms (eidola, εἴδολα).
15 – Bacon is here alluding to Plato’s myth of the cave. Read
Plato, _Republic_ (Jowett’s trans.), Bk. VII, 514 A–520 E.
16 – Bacon is satirical here and is likening philosophical
systems to stage-plays.
17 – But see the contradiction in the theory of Hobbes.
18 – Read Robertson, _Hobbes_ (Blackwood’s _Phil. Classics_),
pp. 204–206; Falckenberg, _Hist. Mod. Phil._, pp. 71–72;
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, article, “Hobbes”; Leslie
Stephen, _Hobbes_; Watson, _Hedonistic Theories_, pp.
73–94; Turner, _Hist. Phil._, pp. 443–446; Windelband,
_Hist. Phil._, p. 389; Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_,
pp. 359–360; Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp.
57–69, 80–84.
19 – See also the ideal States of Campanella and Bacon, p. 41.
20 – The theory that the assumption of extended, impenetrable,
eternal, and moving bodies explains the universe.
21 – The theory that all knowledge originates in sensations;
that all complex mental states (like memory, reason, etc.)
are only combinations of elementary sensations.
22 – The theory that between alternative courses of conduct
the choice decided upon is fully accounted for by
psychological and other pre-conditions.
23 – The theory sometimes meaning materialism, sometimes
positivism, but sometimes, as here, meaning that man in
all his operations is a product of his environment.
24 – Read Falckenberg, _Hist. Mod. Phil._, p. 72, for his
quotation from Grimm’s criticism of the irreconcilable
contradiction of the empirical and the rational in Hobbes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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