CONTRIBUTIONS OF MORAL THINKERS AND PHILOSOPHERS FROM India & THE WORLD
G.S. PAPER-IV (ETHICS, INTEGRITY AND APTITUDE)
1. Important Thinkers of the world:
1. PLATO
2. ZENO OF CITIUM
3. JOHN LOCKE
4. ROUSSEAU
5. IMMANUEL KANTE
6. HEGEL
7. KARL MARX
8. MACHIAVELLI
2. Major Thinkers from India
9. LORD BUDDHA
10. LORD MAHAVIRA
11. CHANAKYA
12. SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
13. MAHATMA GANDHI
14. RAJA RAM MOHAN ROY
15. DADABHAI NAOROJI
16. B.G.TILAK
3. Women reformers & recent personalities
17. ANNIE BESANT
18. ARUNA ASAF ALI
19. SAROJINI NAIDU
20. VIJAYALAKSHMI PANDIT
21. MALALA YOUSUFZAI
22. SUNILA ABEYESEKARA
23. ANGELIQUE NAMAIKA
24. DAYAMANI BIRLA
Major Philosophers from the world:
PLATO :
* He was Socrates prized student.
* Divided reality into two forms.
reality
ONTOS = Ultimate reality, spiritual and eternal. Ideals are available to us through THOUGHT.
PHENOMENA = Manifestation of the ideal, appearances and are inferior to ideal. Phenomena are available to us through SENSES.
Similarly, BODY= material, mortal and moved; whereas SOUL=ideal, immortal and unmoved.
* Talks about 3 levels of pleasure.
Physical or sensual pleasure- mortal eg: sex.
Sensuous or esthetic pleasure- like admiring someones beauty, enjoying ones marital relation.
Ideal pleasure- Highest level of pleasure= the pleasure of mind, eg: Platonic love i.e. intellectual love for another person unsullied by physical involvement.
* Plato views women as mens equals.
ZENO OF CITIUM:
* Founder of school of STOICISM.
* Stoicism = anything which causes suffering in life is a result of an error in our judgement. Rage, depression etc are flaws in a persons reason. It argues that mental peace must be acquired out of your own will not to let anything upset you.
* Solution to all problems is SHUN DESIRE= you may strive to achieve what you need, but only that & nothing more.
JOHN LOCKE:
* Responsible for life, liberty and estate.
* Referred to as the FATHER OF LIBERALISM.
* Penned the phrase- govt. with the consent of being governed.
* Man responsible for absence of nobility in America.
* Popular foe the development of his priniciples of humanism and individual freedom.
ROUSSEAU:
* Emphasized mans natural goodness.
* A critic of civilization-it is to be seen as a history of decay rather than progress.
* Divided religion into three forms-
Religion of man is his personal religion.
Religion of citizen is PUBLIC.
Third category has two competing systems of law- state and religion.
IMMANUEL KANT:
* Proposed critical philosophy whose fundamental idea is human autonomy.
* Argues that human understanding is the source of all the general laws of nature that structure all our experience.
* Major book- Universal Natural History and Theory of Heavens, in which he developed, what later came to be known as the Nebular Hypothesis about the formation of the solar system.
HEGEL:
* Developed the ideas of psychiatry based on the concept of DIALECTICS.
* The synthesis becomes a new idea in itself, leading to another antithesis, giving rise to a new synthesis & the process goes on.
KARL MARX:
* Outlined a humanist concept of communism.
* Discovered the law of development of human history.
* Real mission in life- to contribute to overthrow the capitalist society and the state institutions which such society had brought into being, to contribute to liberate the modern proletariat.
* He was most hated man of his times. Governments deported him from their territories, bourgeois vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him.
* According to Marx, synthesis is always better than thesis and antithesis, antithesis is more advanced than thesis.
* Order of change-
FEUDALISM
CAPITALISM
SOCIALISM
MACHIAVELLI:
* Credited for formulating for the first time modern concept of state.
* He was in direct opposition to the moralistic theory of politics & said that the only real concern of the political ruler should be maintenance of power. Power characteristically defines political activity. Only by means of proper application of power, can a ruler be able to maintain the safety & security in his state.
* He analysed POWER in his famous work- The Prince & demonstrated that politics can only coherently be defined in terms of coercive power and authority as a right to command, has no independent status.
i.e. POWER>AUTHORITY.
(I would not be discussing the Indian thinkers in this article as no serious CS aspirant would be unaware of it, irrespective of philosophy background. Moreover, being much static, all the Indian personalities are covered in history portion. Else it would become too lengthy.)
3. WOMEN REFORMERS & RECENT PERSONALITIES
ANNIE BESANT:
* Her National Secular Society preached FREE THOUGHT.
* She, along with Charles Bradlaugh edited the weekly National Reformer.
* Became the president of Theosophical Society of India which was based on Hindu ideas of karma and reincarnation.
* She established the Indian home rule league, of which she became president.
ARUNA ASAF ALI:
* Referred to as Queen of Quit India Movement.
* Elected as Delhis FIRST mayor.
* Awarded LENIN PRIZE for peace.
* Won Jawahar Lal Nehru award for International understanding.
* Honored with BHARAT RATNA in 1998.
* Carried on secret activities during quit India movement and unfurled the national flag at Gowalia Tank maidan to signify the commencement of the Quit India Movement.
SAROJINI NAIDU
* The NIGHTINGALE OF India.
* First Indian woman to become the president of INC.
* First woman to become the Governor of Uttar Pradesh state.
* Her birthday is celebrated as WOMENS DAY.
* Got recognition as Bul Bule Hind for collection of her poems under the title- Golden Threshold.
Vijayalakshmi pandit:
* First Indian woman to hold a cabinet portfolio local self government & public health.
* Active worker in Indian nationalist movement & was arrested thrice by the british authorities.
* Led the Indian delegation to U.N. serving as Indias ambassador to Moscow, Washington & Mexico.
* First woman to become the president of U.N. General Assembly.
MALALA YOUSUFZAI
* (just recent coverage) => won Amnesty Internationals AMBASSADOR OF CONSCIENCE Award-2013. The award recognizes individuals who have promoted and enhanced the cause of human rights through their life and by example.
ANGELIQUE NAMAIKA:
* Won U.N.s NANSEN REFUGEE award 2013 for helping to rehabilitate women who had been raped and tortured at the hands of rebels LRA (Lords Resistance Army) in Democratic Republic of Congo by training them to start a new business or to go back to school. Popularly known as Sister Namaika.
DAYAMANI BIRLA:
* Iron lady of Jharkhand.
* Won Ellen L.Lutz Indigeneous rights award for her fearless opposition to adivasi rights of tribal people of Jharkhand.
by Gurleen
