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Hegel

Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. He became fascinated by the works of Spinoza, Kant, and Rousseau, and by the French Revolution. Modern philosophy, culture, and society seemed to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions, such as those between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self and other, freedom and authority, knowledge and faith, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute idea" or "absolute knowledge". According to Hegel, the main characteristic of this unity was that it evolved through and manifested itself in contradiction and negation. Contradiction and negation have a dynamic quality that at every point in each domain of reality -- consciousness, history, philosophy, art, nature, society -- leads to further development until a rational unity is reached that preserves the contradictions as phases and sub-parts of a larger, evolutionary whole. This whole is mental because it is mind that can comprehend all of these phases and sub-parts as steps in its own process of comprehension. It is rational because the same, underlying, logical, developmental order underlies every domain of reality and is ultimately the order of self-conscious rational thought, although only in the later stages of development does it come to full self-consciousness. The rational, self-conscious whole is not a thing or being that lies outside of other existing things or minds. Rather, it comes to completion only in the philosophical comprehension of individual existing human minds who, through their own understanding, bring this developmental process to an understanding of itself. Many consider Hegel's thought to represent the summit of early 19th-Century Germany's movement of philosophical idealism. It would come to have a profound impact on many future philosophical schools, including schools that opposed Hegel's specific dialectical idealism, such as Existentialism, the historical materialism of Karl Marx, historicism, and British Idealism. At the same time, modern analytic and positivistic philosophers have considered Hegel a principal target because of what they consider the obscurantism of his philosophy. Hegel was aware of his 'obscurantism' and saw it as part of philosophical thinking that grasps the limitations of everyday thought and concepts and tries to go beyond them. Hegel wrote in his essay "Who Thinks Abstractly?" that it is not the philosopher who thinks abstractly but the person on the street, who uses concepts as fixed, unchangeable givens, without any context. It is the philosopher who thinks concretely, because he or she goes beyond the limits of everyday concepts and understands their larger context. This can make philosophical thought and language seem mysterious or obscure to the person on the street. Hegel influenced Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx and Engels, although all of them opposed the most central themes of Hegel's philosophy. Nor did Hegel have any influence on the nationalist movement in Germany. After less than a generation, Hegel's philosophy was suppressed and even banned by the Prussian right-wing, and was firmly rejected by the left-wing in multiple official writings. After the period of Bruno Bauer, Hegel's influence did not make itself felt again until the philosophy of British Idealism and the 20th-century Hegelian Neo-Marxism that began with Georg Lukacs.

Life and work

Hegel was born in Stuttgart on 27 August, 1770. As a child he was a voracious reader of literature, newspapers, philosophical essays, and writings on various other topics. In part, Hegel's literate childhood can be attributed to his uncharacteristically progressive mother who actively nurtured her children's intellectual development. The Hegels were a well-established middle class family in Stuttgart - his father was a civil servant in the administrative government of Württemberg. Hegel was a sickly child and almost died of illness before he was six. He received his education at the Tübinger Stift (seminary of the Protestant Church in Württemberg), where he was friends with the future philosopher Friedrich Schelling and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. In their shared dislike for what was regarded as the restrictive environment of the Tübingen seminary, the three became close friends and mutually influenced each other's ideas. The three watched the unfolding of the French Revolution and immersed themselves in the emerging criticism of the idealist philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Hegel published only four books during his life: the Phenomenology of Spirit (or Phenomenology of Mind), his account of the evolution of consciousness from sense-perception to absolute knowledge, published in 1807; the Science of Logic, the logical and metaphysical core of his philosophy, in three volumes, published in 1811, 1812, and 1816 (revised 1831); Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, a summary of his entire philosophical system, which was originally published in 1816 and revised in 1827 and 1830; and the (Elements of the) Philosophy of Right, his political philosophy, published in 1822. He also published some articles early in his career and during his Berlin period. A number of other works on the philosophy of history, religion, aesthetics, and the history of philosophy were compiled from the lecture notes of his students and published posthumously. Hegel's works have a reputation for their difficulty, and for the breadth of the topics they attempt to cover. Hegel introduced a system for understanding the history of philosophy and the world itself, often described as a progression in which each successive movement emerges as a solution to the contradictions inherent in the preceding movement. For example, the French Revolution for Hegel constitutes the introduction of real freedom into western societies for the first time in recorded history. But precisely because of its absolute novelty, it is also absolutely radical: on the one hand the upsurge of violence required to carry out the revolution cannot cease to be itself, while on the other, it has already consumed its opponent. The revolution therefore has nowhere to turn but onto its own result: the hard-won freedom is consumed by a brutal Reign of Terror. History, however, progresses by learning from its mistakes: only after and precisely because of this experience can one posit the existence of a constitutional state of free citizens, embodying both the benevolent organizing power of rational government and the revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality. Hegel's dense and demanding writing style can be difficult to read; he is described by Bertrand Russell in the History of Western Philosophy as the single most difficult philosopher to understand. This is partly because Hegel tried to develop a new form of thinking and logic, which he called, 'speculative reason' and which is today popularly called, 'dialectics,' to try to overcome what he saw as the limitations of both common sense and of traditional philosophy at grasping philosophical problems and the relation between thought and reality. His work also can be perplexing for modern audiences because he had a teleological and rationalistic view of human society and history that are at odds with recent intellectual trends. And for English readers there is the additional challenge posed by the difficulty of translating his terminology and idiom into English.

Hegel's legacy

Some of Hegel's writing was intended for those with advanced knowledge of philosophy, although his "Encyclopedia" was intended as a textbook in a university course. Nevertheless, like many philosophers, Hegel assumed that his readers would be well-versed in Western philosophy, up to and including Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Fichte and Schelling. For those wishing to read his work without this background, introductions to Hegel and commentaries about Hegel may suffice. However, even this is hotly debated since the reader must choose from multiple interpretations of Hegel's writings from incompatible schools of philosophy. Reading Hegel directly would be the best way to learn about Hegel, but this task has historically proved to be beyond the average reader of philosophy. This difficulty may be the most urgent problem with respect to the legacy of Hegel. One especially difficult aspect of Hegel's work is his innovation in logic. In response to Immanuel Kant's challenge to the limits of Pure Reason, Hegel developed a radically new form of logic, which he called speculation, and which is today popularly called dialectics. The difficulty in reading Hegel was perceived in Hegel's own day, and persists into the 21st century. To understand Hegel fully requires paying attention to his critique of standard logic (e.g. law of contradiction, the law of the excluded middle) and, whether one accepts or rejects it, at least taking it seriously. Many philosophers who came after Hegel and were influenced by him, whether adopting or rejecting his ideas, did so without fully absorbing his new speculative or dialectical logic. Another confusing aspect about the interpretation of Hegel's work is the fact that past historians have spoken of Hegel's influence as represented by two opposing camps. The Right Hegelians, the allegedly direct disciples of Hegel at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now known as the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), advocated a Protestant orthodoxy and the political conservatism of the post-Napoleon Restoration period. The Left Hegelians, also known as the Young Hegelians, interpreted Hegel in a revolutionary sense, leading to an advocation of atheism in religion and liberal democracy in politics. In more recent studies, however, this old paradigm has been questioned. For one thing, no Hegelians of the period ever referred to themselves as Right Hegelians. That was a term of insult that David Strauss (a self-styled Left-Hegelian) hurled at Bruno Bauer (who has most often been classified by historians as a Left-Hegelian, but who rejected both titles for himself). For another thing, no self-styled "Left Hegelian" described himself as a follower of Hegel. This includes Karl Marx. Several "Left Hegelians" openly repudiated or insulted the legacy of Hegel's philosophy. Even Marx stated that to make Hegel's philosophy useful for his purposes, he had to "turn Hegel upside down." Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the so-called "Left Hegelian" movement was actually an anti-Hegelian movement. Nevertheless, this historical category continues to persist in modern literature. The critiques of Hegel offered from the "Left Hegelians" led the line of Hegel's thinking into radically new directions - and form a disproportionately large part of the literature on and about Hegel. Twentieth-century interpretations of Hegel have been shaped by several schools of thought: British Idealism, logical positivism, Marxism, and postmodernism. Since the fall of the USSR, a new wave of Hegel scholarship has arisen in the West, without the preconceptions of these particular schools of thought. Walter Jaeschke and Otto Poeggler in Germany, as well as Peter Hodgson and Howard Kainz in America, are notable in this regard. In previous modern accounts of Hegelianism — to undergraduate classes, for example — Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, namely, "thesis" (e.g. the French Revolution), "antithesis" (the Reign of Terror that followed), and "synthesis" (the Constitutional state of free citizens). However, Hegel used this classification only once, and he attributed the terminology to Immanuel Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by Fichte the neo-Kantian. Believing that the traditional description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of thesis-antithesis-synthesis was mistaken, a few scholars, like Raya Dunayevskaya have attempted to discard the triadic approach altogether. According to their argument, although Hegel refers to "the two elemental considerations: first, the idea of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the means for realising it, i.e. the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity" (thesis and antithesis) he doesn't use "synthesis" but instead speaks of the "Whole": "We then recognised the State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements." Furthermore, in Hegel's language, the "dialectical" aspect or "moment" of thought and reality, by which things or thoughts turn into their opposites or have their inner contradictions brought to the surface, is only preliminary to the "speculative" (and not "synthesizing") aspect or "moment", which grasps the unity of these opposites or contradiction. Thus for Hegel, reason is ultimately "speculative", not "dialectical". To the contrary, scholars like Howard Kainz explain that Hegel's philosophy contains thousands of triads. However, instead of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis," Hegel used different terms to speak about triads, for example, "immediate-mediate-concrete," as well as, "abstract-negative-concrete." Hegel's works speak of synthetic logic. Nevertheless, it is widely admitted today that the old-fashioned description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" was always inaccurate.

Detractors

Hegel used his system of dialectics to explain the whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion, but he has had many critics over the centuries. Some critics suggested that Hegel seems to gloss over the realities of history in order to fit it into his dialectical mold. Karl Popper, a critic of Hegel in The Open Society and Its Enemies, suggests that the Hegel's system forms a thinly veiled justification for the rule of Frederick William III, and that Hegel's idea of the ultimate goal of history is to reach a state approximating that of 1830s Prussia. This view of Hegel as an apologist of state power and precursor of 20th century totalitarianism was criticized thoroughly by Herbert Marcuse in his Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, on the grounds that Hegel was not an apologist for any state or form of authority simply because it existed: for Hegel the state must always be rational. Other scholars, e.g. Walter Kaufmann, have also criticized Popper's theories about Hegel. Arthur Schopenhauer despised Hegel on account of the latter's alleged historicism (among other reasons), and decried Hegel's work as obscurantist "pseudo-philosophy". Schopenhauer, once a colleague of Hegel's at the University of Berlin said: "The height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had been only previously known in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced, general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, as a monument to German stupidity." Some newer philosophers who prefer to follow the tradition of British Philosophy have made similar statements. In Britain, Hegel exercised an influence on the philosophical school called "British Idealism," which included Francis Herbert Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet, in England, and Josiah Royce at Harvard. Analytic philosophy, which dominated philosophy departments in the United States and the United Kingdom, was virtually founded when G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell rejected British Idealism and their colleagues' admiration for Hegel. Hegel remained largely out of fashion in these departments for much of the twentieth century.

Advocates

In the latter half of the 20th century, Hegel's philosophy underwent a major renaissance. This was due to: (a) the rediscovery and reevaluation of Hegel as a possible philosophical progenitor of Marxism by philosophically oriented Marxists; (b) a resurgence of the historical perspective that Hegel brought to everything; and (c) an increasing recognition of the importance of his dialectical method. The book that did the most to reintroduce Hegel into the Marxist canon was perhaps Georg Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness. This sparked a renewed interest in Hegel reflected in the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Raya Dunayevskaya, Alexandre Kojève and Gotthard Günther among others. The Hegel renaissance also highlighted the significance of Hegel's early works, i.e. those published prior to the Phenomenology of Spirit. More recently two prominent American philosophers, John McDowell and Robert Brandom (sometimes, half-seriously, referred to as the Pittsburgh Hegelians), have exhibited a marked Hegelian influence. Beginning in the 1960's, Anglo-American Hegel scholarship has attempted to challenge the traditional interpretation of Hegel as offering a metaphysical system. This view, often referred to as the 'non-metaphysical option', has had a decided influence on many major English language studies of Hegel in the past 40 years. The works of U.S. neoconservative Francis Fukuyama's controversial book The End of History and the Last Man was heavily influenced by a famous Hegel interpreter from the Marxist school, Alexandre Kojève. Among modern scientists, the physicist David Bohm, the mathematician William Lawvere, the logician Kurt Godel and the biologist Ernst Mayr have been deeply interested in or influenced by Hegel's philosophical work. The contemporary theologian Hans Küng has also advanced contemporary scholarship in Hegel studies. Beginning in the 1990's, after the fall of the USSR, a fresh reading of Hegel took place in the West. For these scholars, fairly well represented by the Hegel Society of America in cooperation with German scholars such as Otto Poeggler and Walter Jaeschke, Hegel's works should be read without preconceptions. Marx plays a minor role in these new readings, and actually some contemporary scholars have suggested that Marx's interpretation of Hegel is irrelevant to a proper reading of Hegel. Since 1990 new aspects of Hegel's philosophy have been published that were not typically seen in the West. Here is one example: the essence of Hegel's philosophy is the idea of Freedom. With the idea of Freedom Hegel attempts to explain world history, fine art, political science, the free thinking that is science, the attainments of spirituality and the resolution to problems of metaphysics.

Major works


- Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes Sometimes translated as Phenomenology of Mind) 1807 (See battle of Jena)
- Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik) 1812-1816 (last edition of the first part 1831)
- Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Enzyklopaedie der philosophischen Wissenschaften) 1817-1830
  - Divided into three Major Sections:
    - The Logic
    - Philosophy of Nature
    - Philosophy of Mind
- Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) 1821
- Lectures on Aesthetics
- Lectures on the Philosophy of World History
- Lectures on the History of Philosophy
- Lectures on Philosophy of Religion

Secondary literature


- Theodor W. Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994, translated by Shierry M. Nicholsen, with an introduction by Shierry M. Nicholsen and Jeremy J. Shapiro, ISBN 0262510804 (essays on Hegel's concept of spirit/mind, Hegel's concept of experience, and why Hegel is difficult to read).
- Frederick C. Beiser, The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521387116 (The Cambridge Companions are always a good way to start learning about a particular philosopher, and this Companion is no exception.)
- R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946. ISBN 0192853066 (includes a powerful statement of the case that Hegel authorized an over-powering state, i.e. that his philosophy is a dangerous opponent of individual liberty).
- Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770-1807. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-521-33035-1 (Provides a fascinating account of how "Hegel became Hegel", using the guiding hypothesis that Hegel "was basically a theologian manqué".)
- John N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination. London: Oxford University Press, 1958. ISBN 0195198794
- Michael Forster Hegel and Skepticism. Harvard University Press, 1989. ISBN 0674387074
- Michael Forster Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit. University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0226257428
- H.S. Harris Hegel: Phenomenology and System, a distillation of the author's magisterial two-volume Hegel's Ladder, now the standard commentary on the Phenomenology.
- Justus Hartnack, An Introduction to Hegel's Logic. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. ISBN 0-87220-424-3
- [http://www.johnkadvany.com John Kadvany](2001). Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-2659-0
- Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, ISBN 0801492033 (Fundamental read, striking commentary of Hegel)
- Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. London, 1941 (An introduction to the philosophy of Hegel, devoted to debunking the myth that Hegel's work included in nuce the Fascist totalitarianism of National Socialism; the negation of philosophy through historical materialism)
- Terry P. Pinkard, Hegel: a biography. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 0521496799 (Lucid biography by a leading American Hegelian philosopher. It debunks popular misconceptions about Hegel's thought).
- Robert B. Pippin, Hegel's Idealism: the Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 0521379237 (interpretation that advocates the recognition of a stronger continuity between Hegel and Kant's idealism).
- Georg Lukacs, The Young Hegel. ISBN 0262120704
- Kenneth R. Westphal, Hegel's Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003. ISBN 0-87220-645-9
- Charles Taylor, Hegel. Cambridge University Press, 1975. ISBN 0521291992 (A comprehensive study and singularly lucid exposition by the important Canadian philosopher of Hegel's thought and its impact on the central intellectual and spiritual issues of his own time and to some degree ours)
- Robert M. Wallace, Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-84484-3 (Argues that Hegel's major positions in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of mind and the will are, in fact, plausible and defensible, and defends them against influential criticisms by, among others, Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Charles Taylor).

External links


- [http://wiki.hegel.net The new HegelWiki]
- [http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/index.htm Hegel by HyperText], reference archive on Marxists.org.
- [http://hegel.net Hegel.net - resources available under the GNU FDL]
- [http://wiki.hegel.net/index.php/Hegel Hegel.net - wiki article on Hegel]
- [http://hegel.net/en/hegelbio.htm Links on Hegel's life]
- [http://hegel.net/en/links.htm Commented link list]
- [http://hegel.net/en/ml.htm Hegel mailing lists in the internet]
- [http://hegel-system.de/en/ Explanation of Hegel, mostly in German]
- [http://www.kat.gr/kat/history/Mod/Th/Hegelianism.htm Discussion of the Hegelian tradition, including the Left and Right schism.]
- [http://ca.geocities.com/jazzchul2000/glossary/hegelianism.htm An extensive bibliography]
- [http://www.hegel.org/ The Hegel Society of America]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/ Hegel in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
- http://www.gwfhegel.org/
- [http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/hegel.html Hegel page in 'The History Guide']

Hegel texts online


-
- [http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Hegel%20-%20Philosophy%20of%20History.htm Philosophy of History Introduction] Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg Hegel, Georg ja:ゲオルク・ヴィルヘルム・フリードリヒ・ヘーゲル ko:게오르크 빌헬름 프리드리히 헤겔 nb:Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

August 27

August 27 is the 239th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (240th in leap years), with 126 days remaining.

Events


- 479 BC - Greco-Persian Wars: Persian forces led by Mardonius are routed by Pausanias, the Spartan commander of the Greek army in the Battle of Plataea. Along the with the Greek victory on the same day in the Battle of Mycale, the Persian invasion of Greece ended.
- 55 BC - Julius Caesar lands in Britain for the first time.
- AD 410 - Visigoth sack of Rome ends after three days.
- 1232 - The Formulary of Adjudications is promulgated by Regent Hojo Yasutoki. (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 1232)
- 1776 - Battle of Long Island, in present day Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington
- 1813 - Napoleon defeats the Austrians, Russians and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden
- 1828 - The Russians defeat the Turks at Akhaltzikke.
- 1859 - Petroleum discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania. World's first successful oil well.
- 1861 - Union forces attack Cape Hatteras, North Carolina
- 1883 - The after effects caused by the Krakatau explosion in Indonesia kills 36,000 people.
- 1896 - Anglo-Zanzibar War: the shortest war in world history (9:02 to 9:40) between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.
- 1900 - British defeat Boer commandos at Bergendal
- 1928 - Kellogg-Briand Pact, outlawing war, signed by sixty nations
- 1937 - The automobile division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works is spun off into the Toyota Motor Corporation.
- 1939 - First jet aircraft flight
- 1952 - Reparation negotiations between West Germany and Israel end in Luxembourg; West Germany to pay 3 billion Deutschmarks.
- 1962 - Mariner 2 launched
- 1969 - The first installment of the Otoko wa Tsurai yo (It's Tough Being a Man) movies is released in Japan. Director and screenplay writer Yoji Yamada went on to make 48 installments of the series, which is recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running movie series.
- 1979 - An IRA bomb kills Lord Mountbatten and 3 others on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Another near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland kills 18 British soldiers.
- 1985 - The Nigerian government is peacefully overthrown by Army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.
- 1990 - The British Broadcasting Corporation launches BBC Radio Five Live at 9am GMT with a mixture of sports, news, and children's programming. The station broadcasts for eighteen hours per day.
- 1991 - The European Community recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
- 1991 - Moldova declares independence from the USSR.
- 1993 - The Florida DOT decides to cease producing its distinctive colored U.S. Highway shields so that it can make use of Federal funds for those signs.
- 1993 - The Rainbow Bridge, connecting Tokyo's Shibaura and the island of Odaiba, is completed.
- 2000 - Ostankino Tower in Moscow catches fire, three people are killed.
- 2003 - Mars makes closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing approximately 34,646,416 miles (55,758,006 kilometers) from Earth.

Births


- 1407 - Ashikaga Yoshikazu, Japanese shogun (d. 1425)
- 1471 - George, Duke of Saxony (d. 1539)
- 1637 - Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, Governor of the Province of Maryland (d. 1715)
- 1665 - John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, English politician (d. 1751)
- 1677 - Otto Ferdinand Graf von Abensperg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (d. 1748)
- 1724 - John Joachim Zubly, Swiss-born Continental Congressman (d. 1781)
- 1730 - Johann Georg Hamann, German philosopher (d. 1788)
- 1770 - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher (d. 1831)
- 1809 - Hannibal Hamlin, Vice President of the United States of America (d. 1891)
- 1858 - Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician (d. 1932)
- 1865 - James Henry Breasted, American Egyptologist (d. 1935)
- 1865 - Charles G. Dawes, 30th Vice President of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1951)
- 1870 - Amado Nervo, Mexican poet (d. 1919)
- 1871 - Theodore Dreiser, American author (d. 1945)
- 1874 - Carl Bosch, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
- 1875 - Katharine McCormick, American women's rights activist (d. 1967)
- 1886 - Rebecca Clarke, English composer and violist (d. 1979)
- 1886 - Eric Coates, English composer (d. 1957)
- 1890 - Man Ray, photographer and artist (d. 1976)
- 1899 - C.S. Forester, British author (d. 1966)
- 1899 - Byron Foulger, American character actor (d. 1970)
- 1904 - Norah Lofts, British author (d. 1983)
- 1906 - Ed Gein, American serial killer (d. 1984)
- 1908 - Don Bradman, Australian cricketer (d. 2001)
- 1908 - Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States (d. 1973)
- 1908 - Kurt Wegner, German artist
- 1909 - Lester Young, American musician (d. 1959)
- 1910 - Mother Teresa, Albanian missionary and humanitarian, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1997)
- 1911 - Kay Walsh, British actress (d. 2005)
- 1915 - Norman F. Ramsey, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1916 - Martha Raye, American actress (d. 1994)
- 1921 - Leo Penn, American film director-actor (d. 1998)
- 1926 - Kristen Nygaard, Norwegian mathematician, computer scientist, and politician (d. 2002)
- 1928 - Mangosuthu Buthelezi, South African politician
- 1929 - Ira Levin, American author
- 1932 - Antonia Fraser, British author
- 1935 - Frank Yablans, American film producer
- 1937 - Tommy Sands, American actor and singer
- 1940 - Sonny Sharrock, American jazz guitarist (d. 1994)
- 1942 - B. J. Thomas, American singer
- 1943 - Tuesday Weld, American actress
- 1945 - G.W. Bailey, American actor
- 1947 - Barbara Bach, American actress
- 1947 - Harry Reems, American actor
- 1950 - Charles Fleischer, American actor
- 1951 - Buddy Bell, baseball player-manager
- 1952 - Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens, American actor
- 1953 - Peter Stormare, Swedish-born actor
- 1954 - Derek Warwick, British race car driver
- 1955 - Diana Scarwid, American actress
- 1957 - Bernhard Langer, German golfer
- 1959 - Gerhard Berger, Austrian race car driver
- 1963 - Downtown Julie Brown, Welsh television personality
- 1966 - Juhan Parts, Prime Minister of Estonia
- 1970 - Peter Ebdon, English snooker player
- 1970 - Tony Kanal, American-British musician (No Doubt)
- 1970 - Jim Thome, baseball player
- 1973 - Dietmar Hamann, German footballer
- 1974 - Jose Vidro, Puerto Rican Major League Baseball player
- 1975 - Jonny Moseley, American skier
- 1976 - Sarah Chalke, Canadian actress
- 1976 - Carlos Moya, Spanish tennis player
- 1976 - Mark Webber, Australian race car driver
- 1977 - Deco, Brazilian footballer
- 1979 - Tian Liang, Chinese diver
- 1988 - Alexa Vega, American actress

Deaths


- 1312 - Arthur II, Duke of Brittany (b. 1262)
- 1394 - Chokei, Emperor of Japan (b. 1343)
- 1450 - Reginald West, 6th Baron De La Warr, English politician (b. 1395)
- 1521 - Josquin Des Prez, Flemish composer
- 1545 - Piotr Gamrat, Polish Catholic archbishop (b. 1487)
- 1572 - Claude Goudimel, French composer
- 1577 - Titian, Italian artist
- 1590 - Pope Sixtus V (b. 1521)
- 1635 - Félix Lope de Vega, Spanish poet and playwright (b. 1562)
- 1664 - Francisco Zurbarán, Spanish painter (b. 1598)
- 1748 - James Thomson, Scottish poet (b. 1700)
- 1773 - Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, Prussian general (b. 1721)
- 1875 - William Chapman Ralston, American banker (b. 1826)
- 1909 - Emil Christian Hansen, Danish fermentation physiologist (b. 1842)
- 1929 - Herman Potočnik Noordung, Slovenian rocket scientist (b. 1892)
- 1931 - Frank Harris, Irish author and editor (b. 1856)
- 1931 - Francis Marion Smith, American borax magnate (b. 1846)
- 1948 - Charles Evans Hughes, U.S. Supreme Court justice (b. 1862)
- 1958 - Ernest Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1901)
- 1963 - Garrett Morgan, American inventor (b. 1877)
- 1963 - W.E.B. DuBois, American civil rights activist and scholar (b. 1868)
- 1964 - Gracie Allen, American actress and comedienne
- 1965 - Le Corbusier, Swiss architect (b. 1887)
- 1967 - Brian Epstein, English manager of The Beatles (b. 1934)
- 1968 - Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent (b. 1906)
- 1969 - Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist (b. 1884)
- 1969 - Erika Mann, German writer and daughter of Thomas Mann (b. 1905)
- 1971 - Bennett Cerf, American publisher and television personality (b. 1898)
- 1975 - Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia (b. 1892)
- 1976 - Mukesh, Indian playback singer (b. 1923)
- 1979 - Earl Mountbatten, British admiral and statesman (assassinated) (b. 1900)
- 1980 - Douglas Kenney, American humorist (b. 1947)
- 1988 - William Sargant, British psychiatrist (b. 1907)
- 1990 - Stevie Ray Vaughan, American guitarist (b. 1954)
- 1997 - Brandon Tartikoff, American television producer (b. 1949)
- 2002 - Richard Ricci, American handyman wrongly suspected of being a kidnapper in the Elizabeth Smart case (b. 1953)
- 2003 - Pierre Poujade, French politician (b. 1920)
- 2004 - Willie Crawford, baseball player (b. 1946)

Holidays and observances


- Roman festivals - Volturnalia held in honor of Volturnus
- RC Saints - Saint Monica of Hippo
- Moldova - Independence Day (from the USSR, 1991): the national holiday

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/27 BBC: On This Day] ---- August 26 - August 28 - July 27 - September 27 -- listing of all days ko:8월 27일 ms:27 Ogos ja:8月27日 simple:August 27 th:27 สิงหาคม

1770

1770 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar).

Events


- March 5 - Boston Massacre: 5 Americans killed by British troops in an event that would help start the American Revolutionary War 5 years later.
- May 14 - Marie Antoinette arrives at the French court.
- May 16 - 14-year old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year old Louis-Auguste (who later becomes Louis XVI King of France).
- May 16 - Fireworks at the wedding of the crown prince of France in Paris cause a fire – 800 dead
- July 1 - Comet Lexell (D/1770 L1) passes the Earth
- August 22 - James Cook claimed for Great Britain the eastern coast of New Holland (Australia)
- Joseph Priestley, British chemist, recommends the use of a rubber to remove pencil marks.
- Joseph Louis Lagrange proves Bachet's Conjecture.

Births


- February 21 - Georges Mouton, Marshal of France (d. 1838)
- March 2 - Louis Gabriel Suchet, Marshal of France (d. 1826)
- March 20 - Friedrich Hölderlin, German writer (d. 1843)
- April 7 - William Wordsworth, English poet (d. 1850)
- April 25 - Georg Sverdrup, Norwegian philologist (d. 1850)
- April 30 - David Thompson, English-Canadian explorer (d. 1857)
- May 10 - Louis Nicolas Davout, Marshal of France (d. 1823)
- August 1 - William Clark, explorer, Governor of Missouri Territory, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs (d. 1838)
- August 3 - King Frederick William III of Prussia (d. 1840)
- August 27 - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher (d. 1831)
- December 17 - (baptized) Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer (d. 1827)
- december 18 - Nicolas Joseph Maison, Marshal of France and Minister of War (d. 1840)

Deaths


- January 7 - Carl Gustaf Tessin, Swedish politician (b. 1695)
- January 20 - Charles Yorke, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (b. 1722)
- February 26 - Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer and violinist (b. 1692)
- March 27 - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Venetian artist (b. 1696)
- April 25 - Jean-Antoine Nollet, French abbot and physicist (b. 1700)
- May 30 - François Boucher, French painter (b. 1703)
- June 23 - Mark Akenside, English poet and physician (b. 1721)
- July 27 - Robert Dinwiddie, British colonial Governor of Virginia (b. 1693)
- August 24 - Thomas Chatterton, English poet (b. 1752)
- September 30 - Thomas Robinson, 1st Baron Grantham, English politician and diplomat
- September 30 - George Whitefield, English-born Methodist leader (b. 1714)
- October 18 - John Manners, Marquess of Granby, British soldier (b. 1721)
- November 9 - John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll, Scottish politician
- November 13 - George Grenville, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1712)
- November 24 - Charles-Jean-François Hénault, French historian (b. 1685)
- December 5 - James Stirling, Scottish mathematician (b. 1692) Category:1770 ko:1770년 ms:1770

1831

1831 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar).

Events


- February-March - Revolts in Modena, Parma and the Papal States are put down by Austrian troops
- February 14 - Ras Marye of Yejju marches into Tigray and defeats and kills the warlord Sabagadis in the Battle of Debre Abbay.
- February 20 - Battle of Grochow. Polish rebel forces divide a Russian army.
- March 1 - Democrat Samuel Smith becomes President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate until December 4
- March 9 – French Foreign Legion founded
- March 19 - City Bank of New York is the site of the first bank robbery in United States history ($245,000 taken).
- April 7 - Pedro I of Brazil abdicates as emperor of Brazil in favor of his son Pedro II of Brazil.
- April 21 - New York University is founded in New York City, New York.
- May 26 - Battle of Ostroleka. The Poles fight another indecisive battle.
- June 1 - James Clark Ross discovers the position of the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula.
- July 21 - Inauguration of Léopold I of Belgium, first king of the Belgians
- August 2 - Dutch invasion of Belgium. It is repelled by a French army
- August 21 - Outbreak of Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. Approximately 55 whites stabbed, shot and clubbed to death.
- September 6-8 - Battle of Warsaw - The Russians take the Polish capital and crush resistance.
- September 22 - UK House of Commons passes the Reform Bill - it is later defeated in the House of Lords
- October 26 – Cholera epidemic begins in Sunderland, England
- October 30 - In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave revolt in United States history.
- October 31 - Rioters burn down 100 houses in Bristol, UK - intervention by 14th Dragoons leads to death of hundreds
- November 11 - In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
- December 27 - Charles Darwin embarks on his historic journey aboard the HMS Beagle.
- The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper is first published.
- Cholera in Hamburg

Births


- January 7 - Heinrich von Stephan, German postal union organizer (d. 1897)
- January 26 - Mary Mapes Dodged, writer (d. 1907)
- March 3 - George Pullman, American inventor and industrialist (d. 1897)
- March 6 - Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, theologian (d. 1910)
- March 12 - Clement Studebaker, American automobile pioneer (d. 1901)
- March 20 - Solomon L. Spink, U.S. Congressman from Illinois (d. 1881)
- June 1 - John Bell Hood, American Confederate general (d. 1879)
- June 13 - James Clark Maxwell, Scottish physicist (d. 1879)
- June 28 - Joseph Joachim, Austrian violinist (d. 1907)
- July 22 - Emperor Komei of Japan (d. 1867)
- 12 August - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Russian-born author and theosophist (d. 1891)
- September 18 - Siegfried Marcus, German-Austrian automobile pioneer (d. 1898)
- October 6 - Richard Dedekind, German mathematician (d. 1916)
- October 18 - Emperor Frederick III of Germany (d. 1888)
- October 31 - Romualdo Pacheco, Governor of California (d. 1899)

Deaths


- January 21 - Achim von Arnim, German poet (b. 1781)
- February 14 - Vincente Guerrero, Mexican revolutionary leader (b. 1782)
- February 17 - Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (b. 1785)
- February 25 - Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, German writer (b. 1752)
- April 20 - John Abernethy (surgeon) (b. 1764)
- April 27 - Charles Felix of Savoy, King of Sardinia (b. 1765)
- June 27 - Sophie Germain, French mathematician (b. 1776)
- July 4 - James Monroe, 5th President of the United States (b. 1758)
- July 16 - Louis Alexandre Andrault Graf Langeron, Russian general (b. 1763)
- August 24 - August von Gneisenau, Prussian field marshal (b. 1760)
- November 11 - Nat Turner, American slave rebel (b. 1800)
- November 14 - Georg Hegel, German philosopher (b. 1770)
- November 16 - Carl von Clausewitz, German military strategist (b. 1780)
- Sabagadis - Ethiopian warlord Category:1831 ko:1831년 ms:1831 ja:1831年 simple:1831

Philosopher

A philosopher is a person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. The word, "philosopher," literally means "lover of wisdom." Greek: "φίλος + σοφία"

Popular Western philosophers in (approximate) historical order


Not listed above: (some of) The Presocratics -- Epicurus place after Aristotle --Hellenistic Philosophers -- Cicero -- Avicenna -- Sir Thomas Browne -- Francis Bacon -- Thomas Reid -- Dugald Stewart -- James Mill -- Rudolf Steiner -- Albert Schweitzer -- G. E. Moore -- Albert Camus -- Georg Henrik von Wright -- Mortimer Adler -- Nelson Goodman -- Imre Lakatos -- Paul Feyerabend -- Mario Bunge -- Douglas Hofstadter -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin--Ayn Rand

Eastern philosophers in approximate historical order:

Gautama Buddha -- Confucius -- Mozi -- Lao Zi -- Rhazes -- Mencius -- Zhuang Zi -- Xun Zi --Han Feizi -- Nagarjuna -- Bodhidharma -- Avicenna -- Shankara -- Dogen -- Zhu Xi -- Feng Youlan -- Iqbal -- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Philosophers: listed by philosophical school

See Philosophical Movements. Krishnamoorti

Nicknames of Medieval Philosophers

Several medieval philosophers have been given Latin nicknames -- some by their contemporaries, others by historians. For example:
- Francis Mayron - Doctor acutus, the acute doctor, or Doctor illuminatus
- St. Thomas Aquinas - Doctor Angelicus, the angelic doctor, or Doctor Communis
- William of Ockham - Doctor Invincibilis
- Alexander of Hales - Doctor Irrefragibilis
- Roger Bacon - Doctor Mirabilis, the wonderful doctor
- John Bassol - Doctor Ordinatissimus, the most methodical doctor
- Nissim Cahn - Doctor Gaon, the innovative doctor
- St. Bonaventure - Doctor Seraphicus
- Henry Goethals (Hendricus Bonicollius) - Doctor Solemnis, the solemn doctor
- Richard Middleton - the solid doctor, or the profound doctor
- Duns Scotus - Doctor Subtilis, the discriminating doctor, or Doctor Marianus
- Albertus Magnus - Doctor Universalis
- Durandus de Sancto Portiano - the most resolute doctor
- Thomas Bradwardine - the profound doctor
- Jean Ruysbroeck (Joannes Ruysbrokius) - the divine doctor or ecstatic doctor See Also the articles at: Philosophy, Eastern philosophy, Epistemology, Ethics, Metaphysics, Aesthetics, Deconstruction, Ontology, Logic, Reason, Mathematicians, Feminism, Scientists, List of philosophers, and a fuller listing at :Category:Philosophers. ---- The Philosopher is also the nickname of Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 22. Category:Philosophy Category:Humanities occupations ko:철학자 ja:思想家 th:นักปรัชญา

Württemberg

Württemberg (often spelled Wurttemberg in English) refers to an area and a former state in Swabia, a region in south-western Germany. Its capital for the by far longest period was Stuttgart. For short periods of time, the seat of the government resp. the monarch was located in Ludwigsburg and Urach. The name of the dynasty and the state originates from a steep Stuttgart hill, close to Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. Württemberg, once a Duchy, became a Kingdom after the implosion of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, during the reign of Frederick I of Württemberg, and finally a Republic in 1918. After the Federal Republic of Germany was composed in 1949, Württemberg in 1952 merged with Baden to become the German Land (state) of Baden-Württemberg. It lies between 47° 34' 48" and 49° 35' 17" N., and between 8° 15' and 10° 30' E. Its greatest length from north to south comprised 140 miles (225 km); its greatest breadth comprised 100 miles (160 km); its boundaries had a circumference of 1116 miles (1800 km). Its total area comprised 20,000 km2 (7534 mile2). It shared a boundary on the East with Bavaria, and on the other three sides with Baden, with the exception of a short distance on the South, where it bordered Hohenzollern and Lake Constance.

Geography


- Geography of Württemberg

Climate

The temperate climate turns colder among the mountains in the south. The mean temperature varies at different points from 6 to 10 °C. Abundant forests induce much rain, most of which falls in the summer. Given on the whole fertile and well-cultivated soil, agriculture formed the main occupation of the inhabitants.

Demography


- Demographics of Württemberg

Agriculture

The Kingdom of Württemberg essentially formed an agricultural state, and of its 4,821,760 acres (20,000 km2), 44.9 % comprised agricultural land and gardens, 1.1 % vineyards, 17.9 % meadows and pastures, and 30.8 % forest. It possessed rich meadowlands, cornfields, orchards, gardens, and hills covered with vines. The chief agricultural products were oats, spelt, rye, wheat, barley, hops. To these add wine (mostly of excellent quality) of an annual value of about one million pounds sterling, peas and beans, maize, fruit, (chiefly cherries and apples), beets and tobacco, and garden and dairy produce. Württembergers reared considerable numbers of cattle, sheep and pigs; and paid great attention to the breeding of horses.

Mining

The Kingdom of Württemberg lacked minerals of great industrial importance apart from salt and iron. The salt industry came to prominence only at the beginning of the 19th century. The iron industry, on the other hand, had great antiquity, but completely lacked coal mines within the Kingdom. Other minerals produced included granite, limestone, ironstone and fireclay.

Manufactures

The old-established manufactures embraced linen, woollen and cotton fabrics, particularly at Esslingen and Göppingen, and paper-making, especially at Ravensburg, Heilbronn and other places in Lower Swabia. The manufacturing industries, assisted by the government, developed rapidly during the later years of the 19th century, notably metal-working, especially such branches of it as require exact and delicate workmanship. Particular importance attached to iron and steel goods, locomotives (for which Esslingen enjoyed a good reputation), machinery, cars, bicycles, small arms (in the Mauser factory at Oberndorf), all kinds of scientific and artistic appliances, pianos (at Stuttgart), organs and other musical instruments, photographic apparatus, clocks (in the Black Forest), electrical apparatus, and gold- and silver-goods. Extensive chemical works, potteries, cabinet-making workshops, sugar factories, breweries and distilleries operated. Water-power and petrol largely compensated for the lack of coal. Among other interesting developments note the manufacture of liquid carbonic acid gas extracted from natural gas springs beside the Eyach, a tributary of the Neckar.

Commerce

The Kingdom of Württemberg's principal exports included cattle, cereals, wood, pianos, salt, oil, leather, cotton and linen fabrics, beer, wine and spirits. Commerce centred on the cities of Stuttgart, Ulm, Heilbronn and Friedrichshafen. Stuttgart, once called the Leipzig of South Germany, boasted an extensive book trade.

Communications

In 1907 the Kingdom of Württemberg had 1219 miles (2,000 km) of railways, of which all except 159 miles (256 km) belonged to the state. Navigable waters included the Neckar, the Schussen, Lake Constance, and the Danube downstream from Ulm. The Kingdom had fairly good quality roads; the oldest of them of Roman construction. Württemberg, like Bavaria, retained the control of its own postal and telegraph service on the foundation of the new German Empire in 1871.

Constitution

As a constitutional monarchy, the Kingdom of Württemberg functioned as a member of the German Empire, with four votes in the then Federal Council (Bundesrat), and seventeen in the Reichstag (parliament). The constitution rested on a law of 1819, amended in 1868, in 1874, and again in 1906. The hereditary crown conveyed the simple title of "King of Württemberg". The king received a civil list of 103,227 pounds sterling. The Kingdom possessed a bi-cameral legislature. The upper chamber (Standesherren) comprised:
- adult princes of the blood
- heads of noble families from the rank of count (Graf) upwards
- representatives of territories (Standesherrschafien) which possessed votes in the old German Imperial Diet or in the local diet
- members (not more than 6) nominated by the King
- 8 members of knightly rank
- 6 ecclesiastical dignitaries
- a representative of the university of Tübingen
- a representative of the Stuttgart University of Technology
- 2 representatives of commerce and industry
- 2 representatives of agriculture
- 1 representative of handicrafts. The lower house (Abgeordnetenhaus) had 92 members:
- 63 representatives from the administrative divisions (Oberamtsbezirke)
- 6 representatives from Stuttgart, elected by proportional representation
- 6 representatives, one from each of the six chief provincial towns
- 17 members elected by the two electoral divisions (Landeswahlkreise), elected by proportional representation The King appointed the President of the upper chamber; after 1874 the lower chamber elected its own chairman. Members of both houses had to have reached twenty-five years of age. Württemberg parliaments had terms of six years; all male citizens over twenty-five years of age possessed suffrage rights, voting by ballot. The highest executive power rested in the hands of the Ministry of State (Staatsministerium), consisting of six ministers for:
- justice
- foreign affairs (with the royal household, railways, posts and telegraphs)
- the interior
- public worship and education
- war
- finance The Kingdom also had a Privy Council, consisting of the ministers and some nominated councillors (wirkliche Staatsräte), who advised the sovereign at his command. The judges of a special supreme court of justice, called the Staatsgerichtshof (which functioned as the guardian of the constitution), gained office partly through election by the chambers and partly through appointment by the King. Each of the chambers had the right to impeach the ministers. The Kingdom comprised four governmental departments (Kreise), subdivided into sixty-four divisions (Oberamtsbezirke), each under a headman (Oberamtmann) assisted by a local council (Amtsversammlung). A Government (Regierung) heads each of the four departments.

Ecclesiatical Administration

The right of direction over the churches resided in the King, who had also, so long as he belonged to the Protestant Church, the guardianship of the spiritual rights of that Church. The Protestant Church is controlled (under the minister of religion and education) by a consistory and a synod. The consistory comprised a president, 9 councillors and 6 general superintendents or prelates from six principal towns. The synod consisted of a representative council, including both lay and clerical members. The Roman Catholic Church in the Kingdom answered to the bishop of Rottenburg, in the archdiocese of Freiburg. Politically it obeyed a Roman Catholic council, appointed by government. A state-appointed council (Oberkirchenbehörde) regulated Württemberg Judaism after 1828.

Education

The Kingdom claimed universal literacy (reading and writing) over the age of ten years. Higher learning occurred at the university of Tübingen, in the Stuttgart University of Technology, the veterinary high school at Stuttgart, the commercial college at Stuttgart, and the agricultural college of Hohenheim. Gymnasia and other schools existed in all the larger towns, while every commune had a primary school. Numerous schools and colleges existed for women. Wuerttemberg also had a school of viticulture.

Army

Under the terms of the convention of 1871 the troops of Württemberg formed the XIII. army corps of the imperial German army.

Finances

The state revenue for 1909-1910 comprised an estimated 4,840,520 pounds sterling, nearly balanced by expenditure. About one-third of the revenue derived from railways, forests and mines; about 1,400,000 pounds sterling from direct taxation; and the remainder from indirect taxes, the post-office and sundry items. In 1909 the public debt amounted to 29,285,335 pounds sterling, of which more than 27,000,000 pounds sterling resulted from the costs of railway construction. Of the expenditure, over 900,000 pounds sterling went towards public worship and education, and over 1,200,000 pounds sterling went in interest and repayment of the national debt. To the treasury of the German Empire the Kingdom contributed 660,000 pounds sterling. Image:Karte von Württemberg und Hohenzollern.jpg

History

History of Württemberg

Bibliography


-
- Württembergische Jahrbücher für Statistik und Landeskunde
- Das Königreich Württemberg, eine Beschreibung nach Kreisen, Oberämtern und Gemeinden (Stuttgart, 1904)
- Statistisches Handbuch für das Königreich Württemberg (Stuttgart, 1885 fol.)
- Das Königreich Württemberg, eine Beschreibung von Land, Volk und Staat (1893)
- Jahresberichte der Handels- und Gewerbekammern in Württemberg
- Lang, Die Entwicklung der Bevölkerung Württembergs im Laufe des 19ten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1903)
- Engel and Schulze, Geognostischer Wegweiser durch Württemberg (Stuttgart, 1908)
- Staatsrecht des Königreichs Württemberg (Tübingen, 1908)
- F. Bitzer, Regierung und Stände in Württemberg (Stuttgart, 1882).
- Category:States of the Holy Roman Empire ko:뷔르템베르크 ja:ヴュルテンベルク nb:Württemberg

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a German philosopher and scientist (astrophysics, mathematics, geography, anthropology) from East Prussia, generally considered to be one of Western society's and modern Europe's most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Kant and his philosophy

Kant defined the Enlightenment, in the essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", as an age shaped by the motto, "Dare to know". This involved thinking autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. Kant's work served as a bridge between the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers. The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy", of the "Copernican revolution" he claimed to have wrought in philosophy, were his epistemology (or theory of knowledge) of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of reason. These placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based activity of "synthesis". This consisted of conceptual unification and integration carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on perceptions within space and time, which are not concepts, but forms of sensibility that are necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are products of the mind in its interaction with what lies outside of mind (the "thing-in-itself"). With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather only in a good will. A good will is one that acts in accordance with universal moral laws that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. These laws obligate her or him to treat other human beings as ends rather than as means to an end. These Kantian ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless his theses that the mind itself makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge (and that knowledge is therefore subject to limits which cannot be overcome), that morality is rooted in human freedom acting autonomously according to rational moral principles, and that philosophy involves self-critical activity irrevocably reshaped philosophy.

Biography

Birth and youth

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724. He spent his entire life in and around Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad). His father was a German craftsman. In his youth, Kant was a a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. He was raised in a Pietist household, a then popular Lutheran reform movement that stressed intense religious devotion, personal humility and a literal reading of the bible. Consequently, Kant received a stern Pietist education, one that favored Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant later described this period as a time of unhappiness because of the strict, punitive, and disciplinary quality of this education.

The young scholar

Kant enrolled in the University of Königsberg in 1740, at the age of 16. He studied the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff under Martin Knutsen, a rationalist who was also familiar with the developments of British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Newton. His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant became a private tutor in the smaller towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. 1749 saw the publication of his first work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. Kant published several more works on scientific topics and became a university lecturer in 1755. From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he would continue to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764, Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and then was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "the Prize Essay"). In 1770, at the age of 45, Kant was finally appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Kant wrote his Inaugural Dissertation in defense of this appointment. This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity.

The critical turn

At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher. Much was expected of him. But, surprisingly, Kant would not publish another work in philosophy for the next eleven years. In response to a letter from his student, Markus Herz, Kant came to recognize that in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties. Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to this problem. When he emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, the first Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The work was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a dry, scholastic style. It received few reviews, and these failed to recognize the Critiques revolutionary nature. Kant was disappointed with the work's reception. Recognizing the obscurity of the original treatise, he wrote the Prolegomena in 1783 as a summary of its main views and he encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a brief commentary of the Critique. Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series of public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Lessing (a distinguished philosopher of the period) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Mendelssohn, and a bitter public dispute arose between them. The controversy gradually escalated into a general debate over the values of the Enlightenment and of reason itself. Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.

Kant's later work

Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. But most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in eighteenth century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. This marked the emergence of German Idealism. Kant was against these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final philosophical acts. Kant's health, long poor, turned for the worst and he died in 1804. His unfinished final work, the fragmentary Opus Postumum, was (as its title suggests) published posthumously.

Kantian myths

A variety of myths have arisen concerning Kant's biography and legend. It is often held, for instance, that Kant was a late bloomer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work. Another common myth concerns Kant's personal mannerisms. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. Again, this is only partly true. While still young, Kant was very gregarious and, though he never married, he remained fond of dinner parties through most of his life. Only later in his life, under the influence of his friend, the English merchant Joseph Green, did Kant adopt a more regulated lifestyle.

Kant's moral philosophy

Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/metaphys-of-morals.txt] (1785), Critique of Practical Reason [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/critique-of-practical-reaso.txt] (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/intro-to-metaphys-of-morals.txt] (1798). Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the Categorical Imperative, from which all other moral obligations are generated. He believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world (e.g., what would make us happy). Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies to all and only rational agents. A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires. (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative.) Kant's categorical imperative was formulated in three ways, which he believed to be roughly equivalent (although many commentators do not):
- The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) says: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature."
- The second formulation (Formula of Humanity) says: "Act that you