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In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault continually discusses ideas of control and power. In a section devoted to what he calls Panopticism, Foucault describes power in terms of Jeremy Bentham’s penitentiary, the Panopticon. Physically, Foucault illustrates the Panopticon as a cylindrical building whose center is dominated by a massive tower comprised of many windows. Along the periphery, many cells divide the space. Each cell is identical with a window to the outside and a corresponding window looking in on the overbearing sight of the tower. The most important aspect of the Panopticon is the idea of observation and surveillance. From the central tower, all is visible; no one is hidden away in dungeon-like enclosures. Each prisoner can be seen and observed but they themselves, conversely, cannot see; the prisoners never know when they are being watched. From this, the Panopticon, in essence, promotes the ideology that power derives from unverifiable observation. “Visibility is a trap”. Read more…

Immanuel Kant, born in Konigsberg, on April 22, 1724, attempted to rebuild philosophy from the ground up. Kant transcended both philosophies of his time, Rationalism and Empiricism. We believe his work did in fact change philosophy permanently.

Kant was born near the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, which is now known as Kalingrad. This was an important regional port, alive with English, Dutch, Polish, and Russian traders. It was the capital of East Prussia, which had become a “Kingdom” in 1701 when Frederick I crowned himself in Konisberg.

Kant was the fourth born of many children, of whom five lived to adulthood. His parents were pietist Lutherans of modest means, his father a master harness maker. After a few years of grammar school, a family friend, the Lutheran pietist preacher Franz Albert Schultz, who had studied with the foremost philosopher in Germany, Christian Wolff, recognized Kant’s talent. Shultz recommended to Kant’s mother that the boy, then eight, should attend the Lutheran Collegium Fridericianum. It was primarily a Latin school, strict and pedantic, where Kant studied the classics, largely by rote; the enforced outward piety experienced in his school was as impetuous to his lifelong endeavor to separate the social practices of religion from its intellectual and moral substance. Read more…

It is true that Voltaire is considered to be one of the greatest figures to come out of the 18th Century Enlightenment. Voltaire is one of the first to establish new ways of thinking and to present new ways to express ones ideas. As we have learned, the Enlightenment is considered to be the beginning of the spread of Western thought and culture. It was a movement that brought out a wide variety of ideas and advances in the fields of philosophy, science, and medicine in the 18th century. As stated in the textbook, “Voltaire virtually personified the Enlightenment (Western Civilizations pg. 651).” Voltaire’s themes were of religious and political liberty, and he argued for common sense and simplicity. He persuaded that these themes would help bring out the goodness in humanity and establish stable authority. In Voltaire’s Candide, we can find many examples of how Voltaire can be considered a “modern” thinker, and how there are some examples of how he might not yet be so “modern”. By examining the common themes and some of the major characters throughout Candide, we can determine whether or not Voltaire is a “modern” think or not. Read more…

Governing a country is an extremely important matter. Many countries around the world have very different opinions on how this should be done. In “Hobbes Leviathan,” Thomas Hobbes claims that there are three distinct forms of government that can exist. The first of these is monarchy where there is a single sovereign person who rules with absolute power. The second is Democracy in which entire assemblies of people rule such that the assemblies are all considered one sovereign power. Last, an aristocracy in which an assembly of nominated people rule such that the assembly as a whole has the sovereign power. According to Hobbes, these are the only three forms of government and all others can be reduced to these. Also, Hobbes claims that Monarchy is the best of the three. Considering that Hobbes definitions of these three forms are all very general, I accept that any form of government can fit into one of them. However, I completely disagree that a monarchy is the best of the three and believe that Hobbes presents a very poor justification to support this. Read more…