Moral and Social Philosophy 3

1
Moral and Social Philosophy 3
Section taught by Howard Taylor
Texts for reading Blind Alley Beliefs David
Cook, chapters 3,4,5 Questions that Matter, Ed
Miller. Philosophy, Popkin and Stroll.
2
Topics for Third Term

• Humanism
• Post-Modernism.
• Existentialism
• Marxism

3
Ideology.

• Ideas.
• How to improve the world or how to behave in the
  world.
• What is wrong with the world.
• How it should be put right.
• Systematic written explanations
• Actions justified by the ideology
• Own morality.

4

• The tutor does his best to be fair to all views -
  religious and non-religious.
• However in the interests of honesty he will
  explain what he thinks and believes and why.
• Although the tutor has his own convictions, the
  assessment of essays and tutorials will not be
  affected by a student's own different
  convictions.
• Knowledge of the subject and good argument are
  all important for assessment.
• Holding the same convictions as, or different
  convictions from, the tutor will not be relevant
  for module assessment.

5
Humanism

• HUMANISM
• "Man is the measure of all things"
• Said Protagoras the ancient Greek Philosopher.
• (What he actually meant was that each person
  knows for him/herself alone what it true and what
  is good.)

6
These days humanist usually means
atheist. However that was not always so. Even
in its modern atheist form it is only a special
(optimistic) form of atheism. In its modern form
it believes that we know nothing greater than
humans and therefore we should place our faith
in humanity above all else. As we shall see later
in the module, other forms of atheism say that
there are no grounds for putting our faith in
anything at all - not even ourselves.
7

• We now turn briefly to the ancient world.
• Ancient Greek philosophers believed the ability
  for reason
• abstract thought
• universal thought
• made human beings unique and superior to all
  other earthly living or non-living things.

8

• Everywhere they looked in nature they saw order
  and therefore mindedness.
• Somehow, then, they believed that
• mind pervades nature.
• human beings share in that universal mind.
• They had no belief in a Creator or Creation -
  (although Aristotle believed in a Prime Mover),
  so nature has to be as it is by logical
  necessity.
• The mysteries of the universe can be understood
  by reason, logic and mathematics alone - without
  the need for experimentation.

9
Renaissance Humanism (15th 16th Centuries)

• Celebration of freedom of thought.
• Dependence on the doctrines of the Church became
  less necessary
• Right and wrong could be discerned from the way
  the world is.
• Natural law.
• Although knowledge became less dependent upon the
  Church, underpinning this humanism was faith in
  the goodness of the natural world and its Creator.

10
Post Enlightenment and Modern Humanism.

• After Newtons discoveries of the laws of
  motion governing the movement of bodies (large
  and small), many gradually came to believe that
  eventually all things would be explicable by
  physical laws alone.
• Growth of a humanism without belief in God.
• The Laws of Nature, eternal?
• Why do the planets orbit the sun?
• Not God but the law of gravity.
• God of the gaps.
• A mechanistic universe.
• Reductionism
• Nevertheless humanism maintains its optimistic
  belief in the goodness of humanity.

11

• EXCERPTS FROM THE BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATIONS
  DECLARATION OF ITS MAIN CONVICTIONS (whole
  slide)
• Humanists reject the idea of any supernatural
  agency intervening to help or hinder us.
• Evidence shows that we have only one life, and
  humanists grasp the opportunity to live it to the
  full.
• Humanists retain faith that people can and will
  continue to solve problems, and that quality of
  life can be improved and made more equitable.
  Humanists are positive, gaining inspiration from
  a rich natural world, our lives and culture.
• Humanists think that
• this world and this life are all we have
• we should try to live full and happy lives
  ourselves and, as part of this, make it easier
  for other people to do the same
• all situations and people deserve to be judged on
  their merits by standards of reason and humanity
  
• individuality and social co-operation are equally
  important.

12
Questions and Problems for Modern Humanism 1
13
Questions and Problems for Modern Humanism 2

• We must promote human happiness.
• Yes but, how do we know what is good for the
  promotion of human happiness in the long term?
• Does not human happiness come from a sense of
  purpose, which is being fulfilled?
• What is this purpose?
• Is humanity's purpose in life to be happy?
• If that is the case, all that is being said is
  that in order for humanity to be happy it must be
  happy!
• The first question above has not been answered.

14
Questions and Problems for Modern Humanism 3

• God is now unnecessary because education has
  meant that humans have 'come of age'.
• Are not some educated people criminals?
• Is there evidence from our behaviour that we have
  grown up and can now safely guide ourselves?
• Mankind is potentially capable of achieving great
  progress in terms, of technology and social
  justice.
• Can we be sure that the way we have used the
  progress in technology has brought more good than
  evil?

15
Questions and Problems for Modern Humanism 4

• Mankind is also free to act and achieve his aims
  if he so chooses - there are no supernatural
  bonds to tie him down.
• If we are nothing but bundles of matter and
  physical laws can there be real freedom?

16
Lord Hailsham If Common Law did take the view
that a child in the womb has the same rights as a
separate human being, it would follow that the
termination of a pregnancy, even to save a
woman's life, is legally the same thing as the
murder of a child. But at the other end of the
scale, I find it impossible to deny that the
embryo in the mother's womb is a form of human
life and, as such, to be reverenced both by the
mother herself and by her doctor. I have to take
into account the holiness and worshipfulness of
human life, whether in the mother or the unborn
child, and, in so far as humanism leads one to
treat human beings as if they were just animals
or, for that matter, to treat animals as if they
were chattels and nothing more, it seems to me to
fall down precisely because it has degraded
humanity and even animal life in the proper scale
of values. . . Humanism by itself has never
redeemed mankind from sin or despair, offers no
explanation why, in acting morally, men are also
acting rationally. In so far as humanism exalts
the nature and destiny of man I am with it all
the way. But in so far as it debases man to a
mere bundle of wants and satisfactions, I find it
unworthy of the name of humanism, because it
fails to understand the nature of humanity it
professes to serve.
17
Post Modernism.

• First what is meant by Modernism?
• It had/has many differing forms mainly expressing
  beliefs about science and/or politics and the
  meaning of human history.
• It was/is the quest for certainty without
  reference to religion. (Many modern people
  remained religious but used religion for their
  private lives and kept it out of the public
  domain.)

18
What is Modernism - continued.

• From science
• Truth is built on logic applied to self-evident
  truths (rationalism) and/or experimental data.
• Objective scientific method applied across the
  board in the soft sciences (eg sociology,
  psychology)
• Naturalism - and scientism The physical
  universe is all there is.
• From history and politics
• Hegels Universal Spirit and the Dialectic.
• Marxism was one political example of modernism.

19
The Meta-narratives of Modernism broke down

• Problems with Modernism.
• Political Theories broke down.
• Sciences advance reveals more and more mystery.
• It cant answer the ultimate questions after all.
• Doubts about sciences ability to be really
  objective.
• Depersonalising influence of modernism
• wars, pollution,
• it cannot explain our personal self-awareness and
  spiritual longings.
• Its optimistic belief in progress has been
  undermined by recent human history.

20
Post Modernism reacts against Modernism.

• If the Meta narratives of Modernism fail should
  we return to the big stories or Meta narratives
  of religion?
• Jean-Francois Lyotard (French Canadian), in 1979,
  defined Post Modernism as incredulity towards
  (all) Meta-narratives.
• Neither science nor politics nor religion give us
  universal truth.
• There is no big story - no universal truth.
• Dont worry - just pick and mix what makes you
  feel good.
• Dont consider the big questions. Just enjoy your
  own little world.

21
Mix together ancient and modern images, sayings
and teachings. Dont ask yourself what they mean
- meaning does not matter - there is no universal
meaning. If possible enjoy both religious
services and speeches by atheists. If they
appear to contradict one another - dont worry -
its how they make you feel that matters. Just
dont get bored.
22
.

• Post Modernism is a care-free attitude to life
  coming from the conviction that there are no
  universal truths.
• But can that conviction remain care-free?
• The conviction also has its inevitable darker
  despairing side - e.g. Nietzsche (19th C German
  philosopher) and his alternatives to Nihilism.
• Nietzsche and his fear of Nihilism are considered
  later under the heading of Existentialism.

23
The Intellectual Problem for Post
Modernism There is no absolute truth is itself
a statement that claims to be absolutely
true! Post Modernism therefore refutes
itself! ------------------------------------------
------ See handout Post Modernism
24
Structuralism, Post Structuralism and
Decontructionism. In contrast to the old view
that all my disparate parts are held together by
my unchanging 'self' and 'consciousness', Structur
alism held that the real 'I' is the construction
of the 'language' of my culture. The old view had
been that my conscious self apprehends the real
world around me, and then from my ideas about
it, formulates language to communicate to other
selves my ideas of reality. So language is a
product of the 'self' apprehending the real world
out there.
25
Structuralism reverses this by making the whole
'language' the source of the structure of the
real 'me'. Words are defined by other words not
by the reality they pretend to reflect. So words
do not refer to the real world. They are
understood by their difference in relation to
other words. (Words 'differ' and do not
'refer') It is claimed evidence for this comes
from attempts to translate one language to
another. All translations are approximations.
This means that there is no direct reference
from reality to word. Words only find meaning in
relation to other words. Structuralists tried to
strip the human of his various cultures that
structure the 'person' to find the real 'person'
behind all the differing manifestations of
humanity.
26

• Post Structuralists thought that
• there were no definite underlying structures that
  could explain the human condition
• it was impossible to step outside of discourse
  and survey the situation objectively.
• Jacques Derrida (1930- ) developed Deconstruction
  as a technique for uncovering the cultural
  assumptions hidden in the texts.
• Influenced by Nietzsche and others, Derrida
  suggests that all text has ambiguity,
• therefore the possibility of a final and complete
  interpretation is impossible.
• There is no point in trying to get back to the
  author (including Derrida himself?).

27

• According to Post Structuralists and
  Deconstructionists
• Language contains hidden hierarchies' and
  'privilege' which construct the culture.
• Language gives Reason/Science special places of
  privilege.
• (Yet science does not really know what reality
  is. It should be more humble.)
• To identify these hierarchies one is involved in
  'deconstruction'.
• Attempts to interpret texts have given the Author
  a privilege.
• Deconstruction rejects this and therefore seeking
  'what the author really meant' is wrong.
  (Therefore to find what Derrida really meant is
  also wrong!)
• Anti-Elitism.
• Post-modern art attacks traditional views of
  'quality. Exhibits
• a bicycle wheel, vacuum cleaners, a dirty nappy,
  a urinal.
• those portraying contradiction and absurdity,
  such as
• a picture of a horse labelled as a door and a
  glass of water labelled as an oak tree.

28
Existentialism.Some important existentialists

• Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55)
• father of existentialism
• Christian
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)
• Atheist.
• Jean Paul Satre (1905-1980)
• Atheist
• Albert Camus (1913 - 60)
• Atheist.
• John McQuarrie
• Christian.

29
Essence and Existence.

• Essence
• Does God exist?
• Who are we?
• Is there life after death?
• What is the good life?
• What is right?
• How can we improve the world?
• What is the purpose of life?

• Existence
• Decisions
• Commitments
• Passions

30
Existentialism
It has many forms but there is a common thread

• Existence precedes essence.
• You are not born with a fixed nature.
• You cannot, by thinking, find the meaning of
  life.
• So dont ponder the essence of your life and then
  act.
• Rather choose and commit yourself to something.
• From your choice you will make and find your own
  essence.
• You cannot avoid choices. (Choosing not to choose
  is a choice)
• This involves a frightening responsibility.
• Death mocks everything in the end. (Atheistic
  form of existentialism only)

31
To Be or Not to Be? - that is the Question.

• Albert Camus (Atheist existentialist who
  eventually died in a car crash) said
• death is philosophy's only problem.
• How does one make sense of life when haunted by
  this spectre?
• Existentialists say
• We must answer To Be and put everything into
  our lives.

32
Background to Existentialism.

• German Philosopher - Hegel. (1770 - 1831)
• Not an existentialist!
• Dialectic
• Socrates
• Ideas in conflict with other ideas lead to
  advance in knowledge.
• Hegels Dialectic
• Nation in conflict with nation leads to advance
  in the progress of history.
• This progress is guided by Great Spirit -
  immanent in World

33
Kierkegaards themes

• Rejected Hegels philosophy as unrelated to life.
• Tumultuous life marked by indecision re marriage
  and ordination.
• We cannot find truth by reflection and reason.
• I must do what God wants me to do and then I will
  find truth.
• Dont go in for proofs.
• The less the evidence the better.
• Decision - leap in dark - pain.

34
Kierkegaards book titles give a clue to his
thinking

• Fear and Trembling
• Philosophical Fragments
• Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
• The Concept of Dread

35
Kierkegaards main themes (Cont)

• Stake your life on something even if, at first,
  there is no reason to do so.
• Dont live a second or third hand life, choose
  for yourself.
• Subjectivity not objectivity is key to truth.
• Enlightenment must come from beyond ones reason.
• One must desire enlightenment for its own sake.

36
Kierkegaards parable.

• King (representing God and/or enlightenment)
  wants to marry peasant girl.
• She must love him not for his wealth or power
• He cant dazzle her with wealth and entice her.
• He cant force her to marry her.
• He conceals himself.
• So
• God concealed Himself from us in Christ.
• We must desire enlightenment for its own sake and
  not be enticed by its benefits.
• Then God is able to miraculously reveal true
  purpose of life to us.
• Kierkegaard was converted during Holy Week

37
Subject - Object relationship

• HGTs comments
• Objective truth does exist.
• Thinking is necessary.
• Thinking alone is not enough.
• Revelation is necessary especially in knowledge
  of persons.
• We cannot be detached observers
• Understand a little, commit a little, understand
  more, commit more.
• Truth does change us.
• Personal commitment and passion is part of the
  quest for objective truth.

38

• Soren Kierkegaard - quotations (1)
• Faith
• Faith is the highest passion in a human being.
  Many in every generation may not come that far,
  but none comes further.
• Life and Living
• Life has its own hidden forces which you can only
  discover by living.
• Mystics and Mysticism
• Just as in earthly life lovers long for the
  moment when they are able to breathe forth their
  love for each other, to let their souls blend in
  a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the
  moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep
  into God.

39
Soren Kierkegaard - quotations (2)

• Personality
• Personality is only ripe when a man has made the
  truth his own.
• Saints
• God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say.
  Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more
  wonderful he makes saints out of sinners.
• Tyranny
• The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr
  dies and his rule begins.

40
Meaning and meaninglessness from two philosopher
mathematicians. (I owe the thoughts to the
Christian philosopher Thomas V.
Morris.) Bertrand Russell (20th C) in Why I am
not a Christian. That man his growth, his
hopes and fears, his love and beliefs, are but
the outcomes of accidental collocations of atoms
that no fire, nor heroism, no intensity of
thought and feeling can preserve individual life
beyond the grave that all the labours of the
ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all
the noonday brightness of human genius, are
destined to extinction in the vast death of the
solar system .. and be buried beneath the debris
of a universe in ruins - all these things, are
yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which
rejects them can hope to stand. Pascal (17th C),
Pensees 139 How hollow and full of trash is
mans heart.
41
Something has meaning if and only if it is
endowed with meaning of significance by a
purposive personal agent or group of such
agents. To have meaning of any kind, a thing
must be brought under the governance of some kind
of purposive intention, whether an intention to
refer, to express, to convey, or to operate in
the production of some acknowledged value. This
is true of all meaning. Meaning is never
intrinsic it is always derivative. Objective or
Subjective Meaning? Some philosophers advocate a
Do-It-Yourself approach to questions of
meaning. According to this view there is no
objective meaning of life waiting to be
discovered. If we order our lives around things
we desire, value and enjoy, within the structure
of goals we take for ourselves, we render them
meaningful and thereby give meaning to the life
they compose. A persons life can therefore have
subjective meaning - or so they say.
42
Problems for Subjective Meaning. How do you
distinguish between one kind of meaningful goal
and another? Someone may focus his whole life on
collecting matchbox covers and another on finding
cures for terrible diseases. How does one
distinguish the trivial from meaningful goals?
There is nothing to appeal to. Someone may be
very good at torturing people and enjoy it very
much so that he focuses his life on that
pursuit. How does one distinguish between worthy
goals and unworthy goals? There is nothing to
appeal to. How can a purely subjective approach
to lifes meaning account for these objective
differences?
43
Nietzsche.

• God is Dead
• Thus Spake Zarathustra begins with pronouncement
  by Zarathustra that God is dead
• Nietzsche meant that belief in God is dying and
  that is the significant fact for belief in lifes
  alleged value. (Rather than the actual
  existence/non-existence of God.)

44
According to Nietzsche Christian belief in God is
essential for meaning and morality. To try to
preserve it without God is an English
fantasy. Values cannot survive without belief in
God. There is no value to be discovered in the
world. He attacks the view that the preservation
and advancement of humankind can be a motive for
morality. He is thus afraid of the nihilism
that will follow the death of God. However he is
also afraid we may cling to Christian morality
(without reason - because God is dead) and
deteriorate into the slave morality described
in the Sermon on the Mount.
45
No truth can serve as the basis of morality or
immorality. (Although there are cases where
moral action should be pursued and immoral be
action avoided but not for any ultimate
reason.) Why should we be interested in truth?
Maybe the pursuit of falsehood might serve us
better. Dissatisfaction is the germ of
ethics. Survival of the fittest belongs to what
we actually are. Therefore our humanity must be
affirmed by the pursuit of Greatness rather
than Goodness. Greatness absorbs and uses
pain. Goodness tries to relieve pain - and is
therefore to be despised. We must assert the
will to power or the master morality rather
than the pathetic appeals to goodness by the
slaves who invoke Christian morality or human
rights to protect them from the masters.
46
Because God is Dead (said Nietzsche)

• It follows that
• the physical world with its laws is all that
  there is
• there is no real I' independent of my
  body/brain. (See quote in next slide)
• no such thing as free thought
• no such thing as reasoning and knowledge
• science as knowledge of the real universe is an
  illusion

47
Quotation from Beyond Good and Evil
As for the superstitions of the logicians, I
shall never tire of underlining a concise little
fact which these superstitious people are loath
to admit - namely that a thought comes when it
wants, not when I' want so that it is a
falsification of the facts to say the subject
I' is the condition of the predicate think'
Here Nietzsche is saying two related things 1.
There is no real self (I) that can initiate
anything. All actions and thoughts are the
result of impersonal physical laws. 2.
Thinking, as we normally consider it, is
impossible.
48
The Irony

• In an age of dramatic scientific discoveries we
  decide that we know nothing
• To the obvious question How can it be true that
  there is no truth?' he provides no answer. He
  cannot.
• Nietzche enjoys the irony that the rationality
  that made science possible has been destroyed by
  science.

49
Nietzsches existentialism in blue

• Science alone provides the given
• This has made our normal understanding of truth
  unintelligible
• There is no objective purpose to life - no good
  and evil.
• We must now seize the moment, say yes to life,
  and impose our will on the world around us. We
  must be strong willed.
• Truth is not discovered it is created.
• Truth is the will to power.

50
An extreme example of Nietzsches rejection of
objective morality

• "Who can attain to anything great if he does not
  feel in himself the force and will to inflict
  great pain ? The ability to suffer is a small
  matter in that line, weak women and even slaves
  often maintain masterliness.
• But not to perish from internal distress and
  doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears
  the cry to it - that is great, that belongs to
  greatness.
• Friedrich Nietzche, 'The Joyful Wisdom', trans.
  by Thomas Common (New York Russell and Russell,
  Inc., 1964), p.25.

51
Nietzsches Contradictory Tragic Life(1)

• Son of a Protestant minister
• Father died young.
• He always loved and honoured his fathers memory.
• On his fathers grave stone he put the words from
  the New Testament
• Love abides forever.
• He had little money, poor health and was lonely.

52
Nietzsches Contradictory Tragic Life(2)

• Yet he hated teaching of Jesus (which taught
  slave morality such as
• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
  kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the
  earth.
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
  righteousness, for they will be filled.
• Blessed are those who are persecuted because of
  righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of
  heaven.
• But I tell you Love your enemies and pray for
  those who persecute you.

53
Nietzsches Contradictory Tragic Life(3)

• He believed such teaching went against his
  conviction that we must assert ourselves in the
  face of adversity.
• He believed Jesus encouraged weakness.
• A Question
• Could the contradictions in his intellectual and
  spiritual life have contributed to his eventual
  insanity? (He died at 56 after spending years in
  a psychiatric hospital)

54
Richard Rorty is Professor of Comparative
Literature in USA and a well known supporter of
Post-Modernism.

• Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality and
  Sentimentality
• When contemporary admirers of Plato claim that
  all featherless bipeds - even the stupid and
  childlike, even the women, even the sodomized -
  have the same inalienable rights, admirers of
  Nietzsche reply that the very idea of
  'inalienable human rights is, like the idea of a
  special added ingredient, a laughably feeble
  attempt by the weaker members of the species to
  fend off the stronger.
• As I see it, one important intellectual advance
  made in our century is the steady decline of
  interest in the quarrel between Plato and
  Nietzsche. There is a growing willingness to
  neglect the question 'What is our nature?' and to
  substitute the question 'What can we make of
  ourselves?' We are coming to think of ourselves
  as the flexible, protean, self-shaping animal
  rather than as the rational animal or the cruel
  animal.
• One of the shapes we have recently assumed is
  that of a human rights culture We should stop
  trying to get behind or beneath this fact, stop
  trying to detect and defend its so-called
  'philosophical presuppositions' Philosophers
  like myself see our task as a matter of making
  our own culture - the human rights culture - more
  self-conscious and more powerful, rather than of
  demonstrating its superiority to other cultures
  by an appeal to something trans-cultural.

55

• If we think of our essence as mere accidental
  descent from bacteria, we can
• find it depressing, as did George Bernard Shaw.
  (Next slide)
• See also handout Bad and Bored.
• Or we can rejoice in the meaninglessness of life
  - and allow the strong to eliminate the weak as
  in the quote of H. G. Wells. (2 slides ahead.)
• (The following GBS and HGW quotes are taken from
  Richard Dawkins The Devils Chaplain.)
• Or we can attempt to rise above the
  meaninglessness of life in personal
  existentialism. (Satre, Camus (?)

56
George Bernard Shaw wrote of Darwinian
evolution When its whole significance dawns on
you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within
you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a
ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and
intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honour
and aspiration.
57
H.G.Wells, however, revelled in the ruthlessness
of nature And how will the New Republic treat
the inferior races? How will it deal with the
black? . . . the yellow man? . . . the Jew? . . .
those swarms of black, and brown, and
dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come
into the new needs of efficiency? Well, the world
is a world, and not a charitable institution, and
I take it they will have to go. . . . And the
ethical system of these men of the New Republic,
the ethical system which will dominate the world
state, will be shaped primarily to favour the
procreation of what is fine and efficient and
beautiful in humanitybeautiful and strong
bodies, clear and powerful minds. . . . And the
method that nature has followed hitherto in the
shaping of the world, whereby weakness was
prevented from propagating weakness . . . is
death. . . . The men of the New Republic . . .
will have an ideal that will make the killing
worth the while. Someone asked Why shouldn't
morality be accepted as the truth and Darwinism a
mere political construct?
58
EXISTENTIALISM AFTER KIERKEGAARD

• Some books by Jean Paul Sartre
• Nausea
• Mockery of humanism.
• Distinction between a person and a thing is
  blurred or denied.
• Being and Nothingness
• The Wall
• No Exit
• The Room

59
Jean Paul Satre - Quotations 1

• "Atheistic existentialism...states that if God
  does not exist, there is at least one being in
  whom existence precedes essence, a being who
  exists before he can be defined by any concept
  and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger
  says, human reality. What is meant here by saying
  that existence precedes essence? It means that,
  first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on
  the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself."

60
Jean Paul Satre - Quotations 2

• "The existentialist is strongly opposed to a
  certain kind of secular ethics which would like
  to abolish God with the least possible expense.
  (This is Satres attack on Humanism.)
• All human actions are equivalent... and all are
  on principle doomed to failure.
• The poor don't know that their function in life
  is to exercise our generosity.
• Every existing thing is born without reason,
  prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by
  chance.

61
Jean Paul Satre - Quotations 3

• Things are entirely what they appear to be and
  behind them . . . there is nothing.
• Hell is other people.,
• My thought is me that's why I can't stop. I
  exist because I think. . . and I can't stop
  myself from thinking.

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Jean Paul Satre - Quotations 4

• "There are two kinds of existentialists first,
  those who are Christian...and on the other hand
  the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I
  class myself. What they have in common is that
  they think that existence precedes essence, or,
  if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the
  turning point."
• We must act out passion before we can feel them.
• Man is condemned to be free because once thrown
  into the world, he is responsible for everything
  he does.

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Albert Camus - Most famous book - The Outsider.
Summary in next slide.

• Quotations from Albert Camus 1
• Ideology
• Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms
  of power, efficiency, and "historical tasks" is
  an actual or potential assassin.
• Injustice
• Children will still die unjustly even in a
  perfect society. Even by his greatest effort, man
  can only propose to diminish, arithmetically, the
  sufferings of the world.
• Life and Living
• If, after all, men cannot always make history
  have meaning, they can always act so that their
  own lives have one.

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Albert Camuss The Outsider. The Outsider is not
a bad man, but he is indifferent to the
difference between good and evil and to societys
norms. This means No pretence of sadness at
mother's funeral. Helps his bad friends,
e.g pimp who was brutal to Arab girl who tried
to escape, neighbour who was cruel to his dog
but wept when it died, Pimp quarrels with girl's
brothers and this leads to a fight in which the
Outsider kills, in self defence??, an Arab. He is
arrested and put on trial for murder. Evidence
against him includes attitude to his mother's
death helping the pimp escape. No pretence. He
is then sentenced to death. Priest comes to him
before execution and appeals to him to accept the
gospel of forgiveness and peace with God.
Angrily refuses saying he doesn't believe in
God. Just before his death he rejoices at
meaningless of everything.
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Quotations from Albert Camus 2

• Optimism
• If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is
  optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say
  that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am
  optimistic as to man.
• Self-knowledge
• To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
  Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.
  We continue to shape our personality all our
  life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should
  die. (This quote shows Camus as a true
  existentialist)
• Suffering
• In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal
  suffering would at least give us a destiny. But
  we do not even have that consolation, and our
  worst agonies come to an end one day.

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Marxism

• Karl Marx (1818 - 1883)
• The Two Main Writings
• Das Capital
• The Communist Party Manifesto.
• But first the background to Marxist theory

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The Dialectic.

• Process.
• Thesis against Antithesis leads to Synthesis.
• This new thesis has its own antithesis.
• So a new synthesis emerges
• And so on
• Dialectic in Socrates and Plato.
• Method of argumentation using contrary case to
  elicit more truth.
• One opinion has a counter opinion.
• The clash of the two leads to advance in
  understanding in a synthesis - and so on

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Hegel(1770-1831) the Dialectic

• Absolute Spirit (Mind) guides dialectic process.
• A) Process in history of universe
• Material universe - Low level consciousness -
  higher consciousness - self-awareness - human
  reason.
• The Mind of the Universe now expresses itself in
  human reasoning.
• B) Process in history of nations.
• Nation against nation leads to new nation
  incorporating best of both in a new synthesis.
• This new nation conflicts with another nation and
  another nation appears.
• So on until the perfect society is reached.

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Feuerbach (1804 - 1872)

• He denied the existence of the Absolute Mind or
  Spirit.
• Reality can be understood by material processes
  alone.

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Marxs Dialectical Materialism

• The Dialectic is not the conflict of nations but
  classes.
• The Class Struggle.
• The Dialectic is an inevitable process but is not
  moved forward by Absolute Spirit or Mind - there
  is no God or Eternal Mind.
• It can be understood by material and economic
  processes alone.
• A Question for Marxists
• How do we know that blind material processes
  alone will follow the path Marx believed in?

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Some of the main phases of Marxs dialectic

• 1. Feudalism, 2. Capitalism, 3. Socialism, 4.
  Communism.
• Each change is revolutionary not gradual or
  evolutionary.
• The process needs each of these in order.
• A people cannot jump from Feudalism to Socialism
  (say).
• For example Marx believed capitalism was needed
  to give socialism a prosperous foundation.
• However, after Marxs time, one of the main
  communist nation (Russia) did try to jump from
  rural semi-feudal economies to socialism, missing
  out industrial capitalism!

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Feudalism

• Landowner and Tenants.
• Tenants have no right to buy land or significant
  property.
• Permanent serfdom.
• Clash between serfs and landowners leads to
  Capitalism.

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Capitalism leads to Socialist revolution.

• Every person can own land and/or capital.
• Some are successful and start businesses.
• They employ workers.
• Competition between businesses lowers prices.
• Low prices means low wages paid to workers.
• Worker is paid less than the value he puts into
  the product.
• The difference is the surplus value
• Worker becomes alienated from the product.
• Workers rise against owners of capital.
• Workers take over government and seize all
  property for the people.
• Dictatorship of the proletariat (socialism)
  begins.

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Socialism to Communist Utopia.

• The power of the state withers away
• Nations and governments disappear.
• A community of common ownership emerges.
• This communist community would then fulfil Marxs
  famous words
• From each according to his ability to each
  according to his need.
• It was this statement that inspired many Western
  Christian people to sympathise with Communist
  ideology - at least until the realities of life
  under Stalin (USSR) and Mao (China) became
  apparent.
• This final communist phase was never reached.

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The reality was the opposite of Utopia.

• Even excluding those killed in war or civil war,
  in the 20th Century more than 100 million people
  perished under so-called Marxist governments -
  many more than all those who perished under all
  other systems of government put together.
• Why did this happen?
• Three things, at least, contributed
• Absence of the rule of law.
• The concentration of all political and economic
  power in the hands of a political elite.
• The explicit materialist conviction that human
  beings are not finally accountable to God.

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Marxist Morality and a Paradox

• An act which encourages the forward movement of
  the revolutionary process is good.
• An act (say generosity to the poor) that delays
  the revolution is bad.
• The revolutionary process is inevitable and
  cannot be stopped by anyone.
• Nevertheless we must struggle and fight to
  promote the revolution.