Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century

Period: ~1800–1900 | Context: Industrial Revolution; political revolutions (1789, 1848); rise of capitalism; challenge to Enlightenment rationalism

Overview

The 19th c. is marked by the tension between Enlightenment confidence in reason and progress and the critical reactions that this project produces:

I. Philosophical Romanticism

Context

Romanticism emerges in England (late 18th c.) and reaches its most philosophical expression in Germany (Schlegel, Novalis, Hölderlin, Tieck). It is inseparable from German Idealism.

Central Theses

• Primacy of feeling and intuition over analytical reason
• Nature is not a machine (Newton) — it is a living organism, creative force, expression of the divine
• The infinite and the absolute are accessible through aesthetic intuition and feeling
• The fragment and irony as philosophical-literary forms that preserve the ambiguity of the real
• History and tradition: valorization of the medieval past, popular culture, national identities

Representatives

• Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829): theory of the fragment, romantic irony, concept of poetry as “universal progressive philosophy”
• Novalis / Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801): Heinrich von Ofterdingen; nature as symbolic text of God
• Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834): hermeneutics; religion as feeling of absolute dependence; founder of modern liberal theology

II. Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

Founder of Utilitarianism.

The Principle of Utility

• Every action should be judged by its result: the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people
• Happiness = pleasure; unhappiness = pain
• “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure”

The Felicific Calculus

• Pleasures and pains can be measured by: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, extent
• Legislators should use this calculation to create just laws

The Panopticon

• Design of a circular prison where a guard in the center can observe all prisoners without being seen
• Social control through potential surveillance (Foucault would revisit this in the 20th c.)

Works

• An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

Qualitative Utilitarianism

• Inherits Bentham, but distinguishes higher pleasures (intellectual, moral) from lower pleasures (physical)
• “It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”
• Utility in the long term includes virtue, culture, human development

Individual Liberty

• The Harm Principle: the only legitimate limit to individual freedom is to prevent harm to others
• Defense of freedom of expression, thought, and lifestyle

Feminism

• The Subjection of Women (1869): sexual roles are social constructions and should be abolished

Works

• A System of Logic (1843); Utilitarianism (1863); On Liberty (1859); The Subjection of Women (1869)

III. Auguste Comte and Positivism (1798–1857)

The Law of Three Stages

Humanity and each science pass through three phases:

1. Theological: phenomena are explained by supernatural agents
2. Metaphysical: explanations by abstract entities (essences, forces)
3. Positive/Scientific: description of constant relations among phenomena through observation and experimentation — the only legitimate phase

Hierarchy of the Sciences

Mathematics → Astronomy → Physics → Chemistry → Biology → Sociology (created by Comte)

Sociology is the most complex science and the one that will crown the positivist program: a “social physics” that allows for the scientific organization of society.

Work

• Course on Positive Philosophy (1830–1842, 6 vols.)

IV. Karl Marx (1818–1883)

Marx’s philosophy is inseparable from economic critique and political theory. One of the most influential thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Relation to Hegel

• Marx is a “right-side-up Hegelian” — he inverts Hegel: the dialectic is not ideal, but material
• In the Postface to the 2nd edition of Capital (1873), he states that the Hegelian dialectic is “standing on its head” and must be inverted to reveal the “rational kernel within the mystical shell”

Historical and Dialectical Materialism

• The basis of all history is the material production of life (labor, means of production, relations of production)
• Infrastructure (economic base: productive forces + relations of production) determines the superstructure (State, law, religion, ideology, philosophy)
• History is the history of class struggle: free/slave, patrician/plebeian, lord/serf, bourgeois/proletariat

Alienation (Entfremdung)

• The worker is alienated from his product (belongs to the capitalist), from the labor process (imposed from outside), from other workers, and from his own human essence (Gattungswesen)
• Religious alienation (Feuerbach) is a consequence of economic alienation, not its cause

Critique of Capitalism

• Surplus Value (Mehrwert): the capitalist pays the worker only what is necessary for his reproduction, but appropriates the excess produced
• Commodity Fetishism: social relations appear as relations between things; the commodity conceals the human labor that produced it
• Crises: capitalism generates its own internal contradictions that lead to periodic crises

Politics: The Revolution

• The working class (proletariat) must become conscious of itself and abolish classes
• Stages: capitalism → revolution → dictatorship of the proletariat → socialism → communism (classless, stateless society without alienation)
• “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; what matters is to transform it” — Theses on Feuerbach

Works

• Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844, posthumous)
• The German Ideology (1845–46, with Engels; posthumous)
• The Communist Manifesto (1848, with Engels)
• A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) — preface with historical materialism
• Capital (1867, vol. 1; vols. 2–3 posthumous)

V. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)

Will as Thing-in-Itself

• The Kantian thing-in-itself (unknowable) is the Will — blind impulse, irrational, without purpose
• The world as representation: phenomenal reality is the “veil of Maya” (illusion)
• The world as Will: beneath appearances, there is a single irrational impulse that objectifies itself in degrees (plants, animals, humans)

Pessimism

• Life is suffering — the Will is never fully satisfied; satisfaction generates boredom; boredom generates new desire
• Happiness is the absence of pain; there is no positive pleasure

Paths to Liberation

1. Art: aesthetic contemplation temporarily suspends the Will (music is the Will directly)
2. Compassion (Mitleid): foundation of morality; feeling another’s suffering as one’s own
3. Asceticism: denial of the will-to-live — the Buddhist/Hindu path; the only permanent path

Influences

• Kant (thing-in-itself), Indian philosophy (Buddhism, Upanishads), Plato
• Influenced: Nietzsche (early), Wagner, Freud (death drive), Wittgenstein

Works

• The World as Will and Representation (1818/1844)
• On the Basis of Morality (1840)
• Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

VI. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

Philosopher-poet; the most radical critic of the Western tradition. Immense influence on the 20th century: Existentialism, Post-Structuralism, psychology.

The Death of God

• “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” (The Gay Science, §125)
• Not banal atheism — it is the diagnosis that the supreme values of the West (truth, goodness, God, progress) have lost their binding force
• Consequence: nihilism — without God and without absolute values, everything seems meaningless

Nihilism and the Transvaluation of Values

• Passive nihilism: paralysis, resignation (Schopenhauer)
• Active nihilism: destruction of old values as a step toward creating new ones
• Transvaluation of all values (Umwertung aller Werte): to replace the morality of the herd with noble morality

Genealogy of Morals

• Christian and Socratic morality is a morality of slaves: it was born from the resentment (ressentiment) of the weak against the strong
• Good/bad (gut/schlecht — noble morality: creation of the strong) vs. good/evil (gut/böse — slave morality: reaction of the weak)
• Western morality is a disguised form of hatred and weakness

The Will to Power (Wille zur Macht)

• Not mere will to political power — fundamental impulse of expansion, creation, self-overcoming
• All life is will to power: to assert oneself, grow, create superior forms

The Overman (Übermensch)

• Humanity is a rope over an abyss — between the animal and the overman
• The overman creates his own values; is not moved by fear or resentment
• Note: Nietzsche never defended racism; the Übermensch is a cultural ideal, not a biological one

Eternal Return

• “And if thou shouldst live this life once more and innumerable times more, wouldst thou desire it?”
• Not a literal cosmology — it is the ultimate test of life affirmation: to desire that everything return eternally is the highest sign of amor fati (love of fate)

Apollo and Dionysus (The Birth of Tragedy)

• Apollo: form, beauty, individuation, dream, order
• Dionysus: intoxication, excess, fusion, pulsating life
• Great Greek art balanced the two; the death of tragedy with Socrates (Apollo without Dionysus) impoverishes life

Works

• The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
• Human, All Too Human (1878)
• The Gay Science (1882)
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)
• Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
• On the Genealogy of Morals (1887)
• Twilight of the Idols (1889)
• The Antichrist (1888/1895, posthumous)
• Ecce Homo (1888/1908, posthumous)

General References

• Reale & Antiseri, History of Philosophy, vols. 5 and 6
• Marx & Engels: The Communist Manifesto; Capital, vol. 1
• Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morals; Thus Spoke Zarathustra
• Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1
• Mill: Utilitarianism; On Liberty
• Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction