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Intellectual Background of 20th century Theory

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Theory is skeptical and subversive in nature.

• Socrates (470 -399 BC) questioned conventional wisdom and subjected the longstanding beliefs

of the Athenian society to rigorous rational scrutiny.

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Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) is known as the father of modern Philosophy and the founder of 

the ‘method of doubt’.

• Descartes aspired for the ultimate dream of Western Philosophy, which is knowledge of 

absolute truth, knowledge of ‘things as they really are’.

•  Meditations (1641)

• ‘I think therefore I exist’ or ‘I think therefore I am’.

• The belief that human beings are thinking rational creatures is foundational principle of 

‘Cartesian Philosophy’.

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• The concept of the individual human subject as autonomous and totally separate from the

world it inhabits.

• There is a distance between the mind/subject and the object it thinks about.

• Subject employs intellect and imagination to represent the world.

• The autonomous subject is the source of all action and meaning in the world.

• ‘Method of doubt’, is a methodology that arrives at truth via a process of elimination of 

all uncertainty.

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• There are two main trends in the history of German thought.

• The first trend argues that thought or ‘reason’ is constitutive.

• Second trend argues that reason is transformative.

• The first trend can be traced to the debate initiated by Kant over the limits of human

reason.

• The second trend can be traced to Hegel’s philosophy of history, which attempts to locate

 philosophical reflection in debates about the history of human freedom.

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• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

• Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

• Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

• Critique of Judgment (1790)

• The different faculties of the mind are brought before a tribunal which analyses the

nature, capacities and limits of each faculty.

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• Critique of Pure Reason deals with theoretical or scientific understanding, which gives us

objective knowledge of the physical world that is the subject of Newton’s physics.

• Critique of Practical Reason deals with moral reasoning which gives us understanding of 

abstract concepts such as, the soul, God, morality.

• Critique of Judgment deals with aesthetic judgment.

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• Our mind is equipped with different cognitive modes/faculties.

• The rational mind attributes meaning to the external world.

• The external world can be divided into two categories.

Phenomenal world – the physical world of external appearances that can be

experienced by the senses.

 Noumenal world – is derived from the Greek word ‘nous’ that means pure reason

and indicates the abstract ‘things in themselves’.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831)

• In Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) Hegel develops the concept of World

Spirit, which is the agent and subject of history, as well as the collective

consciousness of humanity.

• The spirit is on a trajectory and its trajectory is teleological in nature.

• From the Greek word ‘teleos’ meaning purpose or goal.

• The purpose of the spirit is to be fully conscious of itself and to realize

its essence, which is freedom.

• The proper subject of philosophy is humanity as a collectivity coming to

a self consciousness.

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• History traces the path in which the spirit develops gradually.