THOMAS HOBBES

Born: April 5, 1588

Birthplace: Westport, Wiltshire, England
Died: December 4, 1679
An English philosopher who wrote the 1651 book, Leviathan, a political treatise that describe
the naturel life of mankind as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short
He was educated at Oxford and worked as a tutor to the son of William Cavendish, later the Earl
of Devonshire.
In 1640, political turmoil forced him to leave England for France, where he continued to
associate with scholars and scientists of Europe (Galileo and Rene Descartes).

Key Concepts
Thomas Hobbes theory of Social Contract appeared for the first time in Leviathan published in
the year 1651 during the Civil War in Britain. Thomas Hobbes legal theory is based on Social
contract. According to him, prior to Social Contract, man lived in the State of Nature. Mans life
in the State of NATURE was one of fear and selfishness. Man lived in chaotic condition of
constant fear. Life in the State of Nature was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Hobbes thus infers from his mechanistic theory of human nature that humans are necessarily
and exclusively self-interested. All men pursue only what they perceive to be in their own
individually considered best interests. They respond mechanistically by being drawn to that
which they desire and repelled by that to which they are averse. In addition to being exclusively
self-interested, Hobbes also argues that human beings are reasonable. They have in them the
rational capacity to pursue their desires as efficiently and maximally as possible. From these
premises of human nature, Hobbes goes on to construct a provocative and compelling argument
for which they ought to be willing to submit themselves to political authority. He did this by
imagining persons in a situation prior to the establishment of society, the State of Nature.

View of Man
Many modern readers consider the idea of human nature put forth by Hobbes to be especially brutal
and cynical. His outlook was influenced by witnessing the brutality of the English civil war and he was
shocked by mans inhumanity to man. The influence of his outlook on human nature can still be seen in
literature and film, where post-apocalyptic stories portray a world where a Hobbesian state of nature
has seemed to become the rule of the land.

JOHN LOCKE
Born: August 29, 1632
Birthplace: Wrington, England
Died: October 28, 1704
He is often called the Father of English Psychology.
At age 15, Locke enrolled at Westminster School where he was taught by Richard Busby, a
Royalist headmaster. He learned from him to remain open-minded but not be easily persuaded
at the same time.
In 1689, Locke published a notable writing known as Two Treatises on Government in which he
advocated human rights and a governmental structure based on checks and balances.
In 1690, he wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which rejected Descartes' view
of innate ideas and told of his own view of empiricism.

Key Concepts
John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding restated the importance of the experience
of the senses over speculation and sets out the case that the human mind at birth is a complete, but
receptive, blank slate ( scraped tablet or tabula rasa ) upon which experience imprints knowledge.
Locke argued that people acquire knowledge from the information about the objects in the world that
our senses bring. People begin with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones. Let
us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How
comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of
man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and
knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. Locke definitely did not believe in powers
of intuition or that the human mind is invested with innate conceptions. In his Some Thoughts
Concerning Education (1697), Locke recommended practical learning to prepare people to manage their
social, economic, and political affairs efficiently. He believed that a sound education began in early
childhood and insisted that the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic be gradual and cumulative.

View of Man
Several philosophers criticized the Lockean memory theory and stated that it was circular and illogical.
Lockes account of personal identity turned out to be revolutionary.
Associationism, as this theory came to be called, exerted a powerful influence over 18th-century
thought, particularly educational theory, as nearly every educational writer warned parents not to allow
their children to develop negative associations.

JOHANN HEINRICH PESTALOZZI

Born: January 12, 1746
Birthplace: Zurich, Switzerland
Died: February 17, 1827
Pestalozzi was the Father of Modern Educational Theory and the instigator of numerous 19thcentury educational reforms.
He entered the ministry, but his studies in theology at the University of Zurich were without
distinction. He tried law and politics, but his humanitarianism was mistaken for radicalism and
he became very unpopular even with those he sought most to help.
In 1769 he settled on his farm, "Neuhof, at Birr, Switzerland, where he planned to fight poverty
by developing improved methods of agriculture.
In 1775 he turned his farm into an orphanage and began to test his ideas on child rearing.
In 1781, he published The Evening Hours of a Hermit, a series of observations on education and
life. That same year, he also published the first volume of his novel Leonard and Gertrude, which
incorporated many of his ideas about educational and social reform; the fourth and last volume
was published in 1785.
In 1798, Pestalozzi offered to assist the orphans of Stanz following the destruction caused by the
Swiss Revolution.
In 1799, Pestalozzi volunteered his services to the village of Burgdorf.
In 1801 he published How Gertrude Teaches Her Children, a sequel to his earlier novel and an
expansion of his educational thought.
Pestalozzi moved his school to a castle at Yverdon in 1805, and it remained there for the next
twenty years. He closed his school and retired to his farm in 1826. He died on February 17, 1827.

Key Concepts
Pestalozzi believed that the purpose of education was to expose the natural powers and faculties latent
in every human being. And, since the moral, social, emotional and intellectual development of each
individual unfolds through education, society is improved by those individuals who achieve their full
potential.
To help the child achieve his full potential, Pestalozzi expanded the elementary school curriculum to
include geography, science, drawing, and music. While most teachers of the day did little more than
lecture to their students, Pestalozzi gives teachers teaching methods, the following are as follows:
a. Child Centered.
b. Direct Experience. The teacher must never teach by words when a child can see, hear or touch an
object for himself. Nature can teach the child better than man can.

c. Activity. The child is expected to be continually active in seeing for himself, making and correcting
mistakes, describing his observations, analyzing objects and satisfying his natural curiosity.
d. Induction. The child must observe, learn to express his impressions of concrete objects perceived by
the senses and must learn to formulate new generalizations for himself.
e. No Books. Early elementary education needs direct and concrete experience rather than books. In this
way the child proceeds from the concrete to the abstract.
f. Simplify All Subjects. All subjects are reduced to their simple elements. The child proceeds, through
experiencing the simple parts, to formulate more abstract generalizations.
In addition to how students were taught, Pestalozzi also changed the way in which students were
treated. He deplored the harsh treatment of children that was normal in schools of the day, and truly
believed that such treatment prevented the natural development of children. Rather than demand
respect, Pestalozzi asserted that the teacher must earn the trust of his charges. He believed that the
schoolroom must possess the atmosphere of a loving Christian family, the members of which are
cooperative, loving and kind to one another.

View of Man
Pestalozzi's theories and methods proved so successful that they still form the basis of
elementary educational systems around the world.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Born: June 28, 1712
Birthplace: Geneva, Republic of Geneva
Died: July 2, 1778
He was an influential Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism.
At the age of 15, Rousseau ran away from Geneva and took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest
in adjoining Savoy. With the help of Franoise-Louise de Warens, a noblewoman of Protestant
background, he was converted into a Catholic.
In the year 1742, Rousseau moved to Paris to present his new system of numbered musical
notation to the Acadmie des Sciences. This system was proposed to be compatible with
typography, and was based on a single line, displaying numbers representing intervals between
notes and dots and commas indicating rhythmic values.
In 1750, Rousseau wrote Discourse on the Arts and Sciences which gained him significant
fame. In 1754, Rousseau returned to Geneva, reconverted to Calvinism and regained his official
Genevan citizenship. The next year he completed his second major work, the Discourse on the
Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men.
In 1761, Rosseau published a massive 800-page novel, Julie, ou la nouvelle Hlose which
proved to be immensely successful. The ecstatic descriptions of Swiss natural beauty in the book
was liked and appreciated by masses.
The next year in 1762, Rousseau published Du Contrat Social, Principes du droit politique.
Later in May, he published Emile: or, On Education. The religious comments in these books
turned both Protestant and Catholic authorities offensive towards him. His books were banned
from France and Geneva. He was publicly condemned by the Archbishop of Paris, his books were
burned, and warrants were issued for his arrest.
On the night of September 6, 1765, his house in Mtiers was stoned and he had to take refuge
in Great Britain with British philosopher David Hume. He returned to France in 1767 using a false
name.
Rosseau suffered a hemorrhage and died at the age of 66. He was initially buried at
Ermenonville on the Ile des Peupliers. In 1794, his remains were moved to the Panthon in Paris.

Key Concepts
In many ways, Rousseau is the opposite mirror image of earlier philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
Rousseau critiqued the Hobbesian idea of the state of nature. Rousseau insisted that human
beings were solitary in the state of nature and essentially good. It was the corruption of society that
brought out the worst in human beings with the idea of personal property being an excuse to wield
power and exploit our fellow man.

It was Rousseaus view that, contrary to the views of Hobbes and John Locke, that the formation
of society actually increased freedom. Rousseau saw the place of human beings in the state of
nature as being completely solitary. As a result human beings were basically good but they were not
free because the solitary existence required them to serve all the needs of their own with no help
from anybody else. Within society we had more freedom to pursue our own goals and interests
because we share the burden of survival with our fellow human beings. This is an idea of freedom
based on autonomy instead of the essentially libertarian idea of freedom of Locke.

View of Man
Rousseaus idea of the noble savage or human being in the state of nature has been sharply
criticized over time. Even in his own time Rousseaus critics accused him of being essentially antiprogress because his theory stated that the more advanced a society became the more corrupt it
would become. Many also saw the idea of a human being in the state of nature being solitary as
being contrary to the basic social nature of human beings. As anthropology and sociology have
developed it has become clear that Rousseaus idea of a solitary human being seems very unlikely
ever to have existed. Still, if one treats this idea of the state of nature as merely a metaphor rather
than as a literal truth, it still is hard to argue that human beings do gain autonomy from having a
place in a civil society.