Enlightenment Ideas Challenged the Philosophers

Enlightenment Ideas Challenged

The philosophers shared the Newtonian belief that the universe is a machine governed by simple mathematical laws, a machine whose constituent parts (matter, energy, space, and time) are the same absolute and unchanging realities that we experience in everyday life. How was this belief undermined by Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg's theories?

Werner Heisenberg stated that contrary to Newton's assumption that the natural laws that governed the real world existed independently of human observation, concepts like the predictable orbits of electrons did not really exist until humans observed those orbits (Cassidy, 2006). No one can really know the precise position and momentum of a particle at a given instant, so the particle's future cannot be determined exactly, only guessed at over a "range of possibilities" for "future motion," so the fact that the orbits looked predictable was the result of human perception, not reality (Cassidy, 2006). According to Newton, predictable causal laws governed the universe, and if someone could know where a particle was at a certain time, a person could predict the particle's next position. Heisenberg stated it was impossible to know the exact position of a particle was at any given moment so only a range of a particle's next positions could be predicted (Cassidy, 2006).

Heisenberg called his principle the Uncertainty Principle, and did not state it was unchanging law of nature. He called his observation the product of "a pure fact of experience" (Hilgevoord, 2007). Einstein called such distinctions the difference between 'constructive theories' and 'principle theories' in science. Constructive theories, like Newton's laws, make a sweeping hypothesis about a wide variety of external phenomena, like bodies in motion. But principled theories depend upon empirical or experience-based observations, and build up a theory from those observations, like Heisenberg did when he created his Uncertainty Principle (Hilgevoord, 2007).

The Uncertainty Principle has implications not just for physics, but for the assumption of predictability in the universe. If it is impossible to predict things even on a subatomic level, the ability to accurately predict human responses and reactions is even more uncertain.

Philosophers believed that just as reason and observation reveal the natural laws governing the universe, so they reveal moral laws that grant the same natural rights to all human beings. How, in their different ways, did Friedrich Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler challenge this belief?

Nietzsche advanced the theory of the Superman, that the ideal man was a man who was willing to get in touch with his natural thoughts and feelings, and defy the accepted laws and morality of society. "In rejecting the idea of a God who gives us values changeless and transcendent of the everyday world he gives us superman, a real individual who creates values which are firmly rooted in the everyday changing world. This is someone who, by trusting his own intuitive sense of what is good and evil, succeeds better than any other" man in proving what it is to be a truly excellent human being (Bradley, 2007). Nietzsche envisioned a return to a kind of pagan past, where people could live outside of Christian norms and instead create their own standards, moment by moment, and live in a creative fashion rather than as slaves to dogma. The notion of superiority came from the idea that some people were more willing and fearless about ignoring socially imposed laws.

However, some of Nietzsche's writings contain descriptions of races that seem to echo Adolf Hitler's notions of racial superiority when he says: "the vulgar man can be distinguished as the dark-colored, and above all as the black-haired... The pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Italian soil, whose complexion formed the clearest feature of distinction from the dominant blondes, namely, the Aryan conquering race:... good, noble, clean, but originally the blonde-haired man in contrast to the dark black-haired aboriginals" ("Nietzsche on Race and Sex." WVC Philosophy Home Page, 2004). Superiority and the idea that some laws apply to only some people were taken to the extreme in the mind of Adolf Hitler and his attempt to build a super race, and a nation where Aryans were encouraged to 'breed' and other racial groups were annihilated. Nietzsche wished to create a world without rules, so everyone could exercise his or her maximum potential, but he believed some races had greater tendencies to embody the qualities of the superman and were more capable of living freely and creatively.

Most of the philosophers believed that human nature can be improved? Why was Sigmund Freud pessimistic about that possibility?

Sigmund Freud believed that human psychology was wired so that human beings would inevitably exist in a state of conflict between their innate desires and social rules for behavior. When human beings were born, they were all id, or devoted to the pleasure principle. To satisfy the needs of the id, the ego is eventually able to articulate what it wants and to delay gratification, and the superego imposes limits upon the schemes of the id, according to societal dictates ("Structure of Mind," 2004).