According to Bertrand Russel, “Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know.” Agreed?

So let us bring to light the few who are behind the famous philosophies of the world, our current blog post 4 Well-Known Philosophers From History is all about that. So without any further delay, let us start.

The first one on our list is,

René Descartes

Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who was born in France but lived for 20 years in the Dutch Republic. Descartes exerted tremendous intellectual influence during the Dutch Golden Age, first as a member of the Dutch States Army, then as the Prince of Orange, and finally as Stadtholder (a position of national leadership in the Dutch Republic). He made a name for himself by often refuting or trying to reverse the ideas of those who came before him.

Thoughts

Discards confidence in all aspects that aren’t completely certain, concentrating instead on knowing what can be known for certain; Is known as the “Father of Analytic Geometry.”

Considered one of the most prominent figures during the Scientific Revolution, a time of rapid exploration, revelation, and invention that swept Europe between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods.

Immanuel Kant

Kant, a Prussian philosopher (and therefore a German philosopher), is regarded as one of the most important figures in modern philosophy, a proponent of reason as the basis of morality, and a theorist whose ideas continue to pervade ethical, epistemological, and political discourse. Kant’s inherent ability to find a balance between rationalists like Descartes and empiricists like Hume, to discern a middle ground that defers to human experience without falling into cynicism, is perhaps what most distinguishes him. By overcoming a key philosophical impasse, Kant was pointing a way forward in his mind.

Thoughts

Identified the “categorical imperative,” the notion that there are intrinsically good and moral ideas to which we all have a responsibility, and that reasonable individuals will inherently find justification in following moral obligations;

Argued that through universal democracy and international cooperation, humanity would achieve perpetual peace;

Assumed that time and space, as well as cause and effect, are fundamental to the human experience and that our perception of the universe is transmitted solely by our senses, rather than the underlying (and possibly unseen) causes of the phenomena we observe.

Soren Kierkegaard

Many consider Kierkegaard to be the most important existentialist philosopher. He was a Danish theologian, social critic, and philosopher. His work was primarily concerned with the concept of the single person. He preferred objective truth over abstract thought in his philosophy. Under this framework, he prioritized personal choice and engagement. His theology was also heavily influenced by this orientation. His work explored the concepts of faith, Christian love, and human emotion, with an emphasis on the importance of the individual’s subjective relationship with God. Since Kierkegaard’s work was only available in Danish at the time, it was only after it was translated that his ideas spread throughout Western Europe. This spread was a significant factor in existentialism’s rise to popularity in the twentieth century.

Thoughts

Investigated the definition of objective vs. subjective truths.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein, who was born into a wealthy Austrian family, is one of philosophy’s most colorful and unique figures. He led an odd and nomadic life, dabbling in academia, military service, education, and even working as a hospital orderly. Furthermore, he wrote a great deal but only published one manuscript during his lifetime. Nonetheless, his contemporaries viewed him as a genius. For future generations, the posthumous publication of his many volumes reinforced this view, making Wittgenstein a towering figure in the fields of logic, semantics, and philosophy of mind. His linguistic and psychological research would prove especially revelatory, providing a unique window through which to better grasp the essence of meaning and the limits of human conception.

Thoughts

Most philosophical intellectual conflict is based on logical uncertainty about language, according to him.

Assumed that the meaning of words is predicated on our comprehension of that meaning and that our special perception of that meaning is affected by the cultural and social structures that surround us;

Resolved that, since thought is inextricably connected to language, and language is socially constructed, we have no real inner-space for the realization of our thoughts, which is to say that our thoughts are necessarily socially constructed by the language in which they are expressed.

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