Descartes was born on March 31, 1956 in La Haye, Touraine,

and France. He was known as a jack of all trades contributing to

the areas of anatomy, cognitive science, optics, mathematics, and
philosophy. He is the father of modern rationalism. He is called as
soldier of fortune, a scientist, scholar, pilgrim, traveler and a firm
adherent of Roman Catholic faith. He taught of cartesianism
(from his Latin name Renatus Cartesius). His aim in philosophy is
simply to furnish a conceptual foundation for the new mechanical
physics based on the Copernican system. His devised method for
reaching the truth known as the method of systematic doubt.
 Rene Descartes is generally considered the father of modern
philosophy. He was the first major figure in the philosophical movement,
known as rationalism, a method of understanding the world based on the
use of reasons as the means to attain knowledge. Along with empiricism,
which stresses the use of sense perception rather than pure reason,
rationalism was one of the main intellectual currents of the
Enlightenment.
Human beings were composites of two kinds of substances, mind and body.
A mind is a conscious or thinking being. It understands, wills, senses and
imagines. A body is a being extended in length, width and breadth. Minds
are invisible, where bodies are infinitely divisible. It is entirely immaterial
and non-spatial.
The I of the I think, therefore I am is the mind and can exist without
being extended. Mind and body are of different nature, but they casually
interact. The human mind causes motions in the bodies by moving a small
part of the brain. Motions in the same part of the brain produces sensations
and emotions.
Bodies differ from how they appear through senses. Colors, sounds, tastes,
smells, heat and cold are merely sensation exist in thought. There is
nothing in bodies resembles them.
The properties of the bodies are those, which are capable of being
quantified, viz, extension and its modes, shape, size and motion.
Descartes asserts that a human would still be human without hands or
hair or face. He also asserts that other things that are not human may have
hair, hands or faces, but human would not be human without reason, and
only humans possess the ability to reason.
 It is said that his birth occurred prematurely, as a result
of his mothers fright at the approach of Spanish Armada to
the English coastline. During his long life he met many of
the leading intellectual of the age, including Francis Bacon,
Gassendi, and Galileo. At one time during the Puritan
Revolution, he acted as tutor to Prince Charles.
As a political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes wrote
Leviathan. Leviathan is a classic history of political theory.
Leviathan is an artificial man, with sovereignty as an
artificial soul. He believed that he could explain everything,
including our moral life, in terms of matter in motion.
 Human beings are sensory creatures. Sensory experience is caused by so
many several motions of matter known as the conceptions of the mind.
Man is a creature whose whole life is a continual struggle for power to
satisfy his never-fulfilled desires, a struggle that he wages incessantly and
ferociously against all other members of his kind.
Humans are essentially equal, both mentally and physically. The weakest
person has the capacity to kill the strongest.
Human condition is a war of every man against every man. In this
situation, humans are in state of constant fear wherein morality does not
exist. There are three motivation: fear of death, the desire to have
adequate living and the hope to attain this through ones labor.
Human nature as humans are creators of the state. Any account of human action,
including morality must be self-serving. This is known as psychological egoism.

Human nature as an account of voluntary motions known as the passions.

Appetites are ultimately nothing but motions in the body. Vital motions
determine all appetitive motions. Every appetite must be conductive to ones own
preservation.
Man has passions and reasons. The most fundamental one is self-preservation. It
is the fear of violent death that moves man to self-preservation.
Reason is an instrument for helping others gets what he wants. It dictates the
most effective means for his preservation.
Mans reason discovers the way to peace. Peace is commonwealth of man. It is
antidote to war. Preservation lives through peace is collectively done through
mutual agreement known as contract. Personhood is inalienable.
 Spinoza was born in Amsterdam on November 24,
1632. He was intended to become a rabbi studying the
Talmud and the Hebrew. He studied the thoughts of
Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes and Giardano Bruno.
 Every man may think what he likes, and say what he thinks; he then
goes on to make the crucial point: The real disturbers of peace are those
who, in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgement which they are
unable to tyrannize over.
The infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the breast; an angry
boy believes that by the freewill he wishes vengeance; the timid man
thinks it is the free will he seeks flight; the drunkard believes that by free
command of his mind he speaks the things which when sober he wishes
he had left unsaid. All believe that they speak by free command of mind
whilst, in the truth, they have no power to restraint the impulse which
they have to speak.
Morality and ethical judgement like choice predicated on an
illusion.
Blame and Praise are non-existent human ideals only
fathomable in the mind because we are so acclimatized to human
consciousness interlinking with our experience that we have a false
ideal of choice predicated upon this.
Man must be freed from the bondage of emotions and strive
through reason.
 Rousseau was born at Geneva. His upbringing and
education were unconventional. His mother died when he
was a few days old and his father care for him was erratic.
His childhood was one of precocious intellectual
stimulation; his later life was that of an unhappy
wanderer, and frequently revealed traces of abnormality.
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. The chains are not
those of a specific despotic rule but of legitimate government and
his concern is to discover a justification for submitting to this sort
of bondage. It is the law rather than anarchy that sets people free.
The nature of human beings is stripped of all the accidental
qualities caused by socialization. Human nature amounts to
understanding what humans are like in a pure state of nature.
He described human beings in the pure state of nature as
uncorrupted by civilization and socialization process.
Man in his natural state is a being in a constant state of war against all
others. Human beings are motivated by self-interest.
Life in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Man is isolated, timid, peaceful, mute, and without the foresight to
worry about what the future will bring.
Humans would be nothing more than monsters. Self-preservation or self-
interest is only one of the two principles of the human soul. Pity is the
other one principle.
Humans are not different from other animals. However, humans are
free agents. They have reason, albeit, not yet developed.
Man is naturally good and the noble savage is free from the vices that
plague humans in civil society.
Human beings in the state of nature are amoral creatures, neither
virtuous nor vicious. After humans leave the state of nature, they can
enjoy an elevated form of goodness such as moral goodness.
Man/Work for Rousseau, are essentially peaceful, content and equal.
It is the socialization process that has produced inequality,
competition and egoistic mentally.
 Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German
Moselle Valley. He studied philosophy at the
University of Berlin. He was greatly influenced by the
works of the great German idealist, G.W.F Hegel. He
soon abandoned Hegelian idealism, however, to
become a political agitator and revolutionary.
Man makes religion; religion does not make man. Marx is bent
Man is the human world, the state and society. This state and society produce
religion. Human being are part of the larger social order.
Marx thus move beyond the previous mechanistic materialism and provides
an equivalent for it with historical materialism. Marxs materialism is
simultaneously humanism. Man is the Supreme Being for man.
Religion is the sign of the unjustly severe creatures, the mawkishly emotional
utterance of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the
opium of the people. Opium in a sense that is eases suffering; a spiritual
intoxicant that prevents us from seeing the reality. Religion intoxicates the
mind of man and prevents msn from viewing life as it is.
Marxist picture of man, according to which man or humanity is its own
Creator and owes its existence only to itself. According to Marx, man in
his own redeemer. For man, the root is man himself. The criticism of
religion ends with the doctrine that man is the Supreme Being for man.
Work is an ultimate form of human self-fulfillment and thereby exhibits
the primacy of man, the worker over things, even over capital.
Christianity views man not simply as an ensemble of social relations but
as persons who, no matter how thoroughly integrated he is into society,
possesses as an intrinsic value and dignity and is, in turn the source,
subject and object of all social institutions.
According to communism- man is not the source of evil- this comes only
from the strictures of capitalism. As soon as they have been destroyed the
communist will make a new man and a true humanism will be possible.
 The Buddhist tradition can be traced back to the
year 563 BCE, the birth of Siddhartha Gautama (the
Enlightened One or the Awakened One). Buddhism is
teaching of Buddha who was born a prince of
Kapilavathu. He married and has a son. He gave up his
life of courts glamour and luxuries because of the sight
of an old man, sick man, dead man and mendicant
monk. He entered the homeless life of a monk to seek
the truth and find way to salvation.
Buddhism is a practice of finding peace within oneself. Their ultimate
goal is enlightenment. Buddhism acts as philosophy that regulates a
persons place in the world.
The Buddhist teaching on God is the sense of an ultimate reality, a
noble science. An ultimate reality, a boundless light, an eternal
noumenon behind phenomena, it must be infinite, unlimited,
unconditioned, unknowable in our present state and without
attributes.
1. The Noble Truth of Suffering- Rebirth, old age, disease, death, sorrow, lamentation,
pain, grief and despair, association with the objects we dislike, separation from objects
we love, not to obtain what one desires cause suffering.
2. The Noble Truth of the Arising Suffering- The six fold cravings are as follows: the
eyes craves for forms, the ears crave for sounds, the nose crave for odors, the tongue
crave for taste, the body craves for objects and the mind crave for nouns, dreams or
illusions.
3. The Noble Truth of the Cessation of suffering- It is a condition of the complete
fading away and extinction of this threefold craving, forsaking it and giving it up. The
liberation and detachment from the threefold and six fold cravings can realize nirvana
or the extinction of the cravings.
4. The Noble Truth of the Path leading to the Cessation of suffering- It is Noble
eightfold path or the middle path that avoids the two extremes of sensual pleasure and
self-mortification. It leads to the cessation of suffering.
 Right Views means knowledge of the teachings of dharma, the four noble truths and
law of karma.
Right Intentions means dispassion, benevolence and refusal to injure others.
Right Speech means no lying, slander, abuse, or idle talk. Man must be
compassionate and full sympathy, with a heart full of loving-kindness and free secret
malice.
Right Action means not taking life, stealing, not indulging in sexuality, slander and
intoxicating liquor or drugs or being sexually disordered.
Right Livelihood is an occupation that does not harm living things, thus butchers,
hunters, fishers and sellers of weapons or liquor are not prescribed.
 Right Effort avoids the arising of evil thoughts and developing such good
in ones mind and maintains a good and meritorious state of mind.
Right Mindfulness and Awareness is disciplined so that it focuses on a
worthy object of meditation. It is right attentiveness, which means
continual recollection of all phenomena about bodily structure, all parts of
human body, all states of health, purity of mind, contemplation of various
states of mind and all kinds of temperament.
Right Concentration is the threshold of nirvana, consists of the four great
efforts such as the effort to avoid and to overcome evil states of mind, the
effort to develop and maintain good states of mind.
 Man must do good, avoid evil and purify the heart. For Buddha, the hearts of ordinary
men are not pure. They are filled with greed, ill will and delusion. To purify the heart man
must: practice self-control and self-restraint, meditating upon ones self and following
eightfold path.

Two Categories of Man and Everything in the World

Name (nama), the term nama is literally means the name but is usually translated into
English as mind, but in Buddhist psychology it is used as collective name refer to the
psychological and mental aspect of human being.
The next category is Form (rupa), the term rupa literally, form, is translated into English
by the word matter or body corporeality. This is also collective name to describe the
physical aspects of human being.
 Buddhism states that when man perceives himself as permanent ego, he is as
deluded as the child who takes a spreading flame for a swift running animal.
The end of this illusion is Nirvana, or the blowing out of the imagined ego. Thus
the term person has a validity only in the relative sense, namely: as popular
designation and experiences in conventional language but not in absolute sense.
The only actual realities are the psycho-physical phenomena although they have
only a momentary duration. There is no permanent reality, the only reality is
impermanence. Only the ego belongs to the realm of naming, the true persons
cannot be reached by the modes of speech.
 Man is just a name given for the five aggregates that compose the individual
but each of the aggregates separately is not man. Now man has the tendency
to look upon things as permanent and yet they are not permanent. Because of
this wrong view, man suffers.
He is bound by ignorance, so the final goal of man is to attain enlightenment;
to free himself from the bonds of ignorance. To do this, man must realize the
impermanence of things and that man is not the five sheaths. Believing this,
man is freed from shackles of ignorance.
He reaches Nirvana, which is the extinction of all desires. Yoga or meditation
can achieve Nirvana.
 Confucianism, major system of thought in China,
developed from teachings of Confucius and his
disciples: Mencius and Hzun Tzu. For Confucius,
philosophy is a kind of system of ideas and thoughts
that talk about the human behavior, the rules to be
followed to become successful in life and about
government.
1) The Great Alternative To retire into solitude or to live in the world and try to shape it.
2) The Nature of Man- The nature of man is called jen. Jen is humanity and morality is one.
To be human means to be in communication.
3) The Source is Absolute, the Manifestation is Relative- Truth and realities are one. The
mere ideas is as nothing. The root of human salvation lies in the knowledge that
influences reality.
4) The Necessity of Order- Order is necessity because it is only in human association that
the essence of man is real. Order is based on a first principle, which throughout life can
serve as a guide to action. Do to no one what you would not wish others to do to you.
In acting on this rule, men are bound by sense of equality.
 Human heartedness (jen) which consists in consideration for
others, loving others, doing to other what you wish others to
do to you;

Righteousness (yi) which is doing what one ought to do, and

doing acts that are obligatory without a personal utilitarian
end in view, to do the right and proper thing in relation to
circumstances without regard with personal profit;

Ritual or propriety (li) which is humbling oneself to pay

respect to others.
Human kindness. He expressed this natural impulse towards harmony as human kindness or
human-heartedness: the feeling for love, kindness, and respect a person feels towards other.
Social Duties. In a principle he called the Rectification of name, Confucius believed that
every social position carried a natural responsibility to fulfill the duties of that role,
particularly in relation to other positions. Society. A strong legal framework was seen as a
failure, since morally correct individuals were self-regulating.
The ruler. A particular responsibility lay with the ruler, who had to set a correct ethical
example for other levels of society to follow.
Education. Confucius believed that through education and the example of proper standards,
the virtuous qualities which lead man and society back into the natural order could be
cultivated so that any individual could become morally correct.
The Sage. A person who behaved correctly could become what Confucius called a superior
man or sage.
The family. Crucial to Confucius, and to all Chinese before and after, was the ideal of
the family as the most important social unit and the basis of all moral behavior.
Role of women. Like most schools of thought, women were relegated to the position of
second-class citizen, with no individual rights.
The golden rule. Confucius taught a version of the near-universal golden rule: Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Neo-Confucianism. Although Confucius views were based on compassion and equal
opportunity, the impulse towards venerating the past and respecting ones superiors
later hardened into a rigid culture actually suppressing new thought in art, science, or
philosophy.
 Lao Tzu wrote Tao Te Ching as the scripture of
Taoism.
The central vehicle of achieving tranquility was the
Tao, a term which has been translated as the
way or the path.
The Tao is a universal principle that permeates
every action and every phenomenon. It is an
abstract entity.
For Lao Tzu simplicity is the key to truth and
freedom. Thus, a man must strive to be a man of
Tao- a sage, a perfect man.
Definition. Partly in deliberate contrast to the other main Chinese School of thought
at the time, the highly analytical Confucianism, and partly because concept of the
Dao is in itself intangible and cannot be easily broken down, Laozi avoided
drawing up any clear-cut, logical outline of his philosophy.

Harmony. One of the main observation in Dao de Jing is Cultivate harmony within
yourself, and harmony becomes real. He wrote: The best of man is like water
which benefits all things, and does not contend with them, which flows in places
that others disdain, where it is in harmony with the Way
Non-action. Nature does not try to control, it simply acts spontaneously. Therefore, human
should not try to force events or nature to conform to their desires, but should simply go
with the flow and let events take their course without agonizing over mundane desires.
The best rulers are hardly known by their subjects, he wrote, and he advised against being
greedy or tyrannical by pointing out, When people have nothing more to lose, then
revolution will result.
Non-violence. Laozi pointed out that if powerful men results to violence, it has a habit of
returning to them.
Yin/Yang. Yin is the passive, accepting force in the universe, while yang is the dynamic,
active force, and as they move in constant counter-balance, they give rise to movement in
the universe: life and death, the seasonal cycle, growth and withdrawal.