Philosophy of the World Trivia Quiz

Levinas was born in 1906 in Kaunas (then Russia, nowadays Lithuania) and moved in the start of the 1920s to France, where he studied philosophy. He died in France in 1995.
Key to Levinas' philosophy and ethics is the recognition of the Other - some person that the observer cannot reduce to a part of himself. He felt ethics is the first command, inspired by the Other - and in dealing ethically with the Other, one can discern a trace of divinity.
Simone de Beauvoir accused Levinas of identifying the Other as solely masculine. I can't understand why de Beauvoir made such a statement, seeing that Levinas published almost only in French. And in the French language "l'autre" ("the other") can be masculine or feminine, or even not human. The pronouns used for "the other" in French don't indicate gender either. Let's take the following example I made up: "Pierre et Catherine sont confus. Pierre a perdu son clef de sa maison, et l'autre a perdu son clef de sa voiture". In translation things become more clear: "Peter and Cathy are troubled. Peter has lost his key to his house, and the other has lost her key to her car."

Hobbes was born in Wiltshire, England in 1588 and studied mathematics and scholarly logic at Oxford and Cambridge. After having published a few translations of Grek and Roman authors, he came up with his masterpiece "Leviathan" in 1651.
Hobbes sketched the disadvantages of an anarchy: as there is no central power, everyone can make claim on everything, with continuous bickering and no progress as a result. That's why Hobbes theorized that people chose a sovereign and ceded their claims to the sovereign in a "social contract". People then just had to obey the sovereign in everything, not because of a moral duty but because the consequences of obeisance would be less disagreeable than the consequences of disobeying (punishment). In Hobbes' view, there should be an almost automatic punitive response to disobeying. This view supported the absolute monarchy as it was the most common state organization at the time.
However, Hobbes did claim the sovereign had received his powers from the people, and not from an almighty deity - which almost led to heresy trials against him.
Hobbes died in Derbyshire in 1679.

Marx was born in Trier (then Prussia, now Germany) in 1818 and died in London in 1883.
Together with his friend Friedrich Engels, Marx developed a philosophy called Communism that views history as determined only by the distribution of wealth. Marx observed a very small number of people (the bourgeoisie, as he called them) owning the great majority of the capital, while the great majority of people (the proletariat) had nothing they called their own, but their children. In Marx's time, the number of bourgeoisie to proletariat was perhaps 10% to 90%, but the ownership was divided just the other way round.
So according to Marx the few bourgeois owned everything and they suppressed the proletarians, making them work as hard as possible for the smallest salary possible. Marx predicted that at one time this would lead to an unsustainable situation. At that point Marx foretold that the proletariat would take up arms, overthrow the bourgeoisie and the government, divide all wealth evenly and thus reach the ideal communist state.
Some of the early members of the communist movement called for immediate action around 1850-1860. But Marx thought the time was not ripe: at first, the suppression of the proletariat had to mount to more extreme pressure before all the proletariat would rise spontaneously.

Charles Louis de Secondat (1689-1755) is better known as baron de Montesquieu. Although born into a Huguenot (Protestant) family near Bordeaux, Montesquieu was sent to a Catholic school. In 1713 he started his legal career as counsellor to the Parlement (high court) of Bordeaux. A few years later he debuted as an author with the satirical "Lettres persanes" ("Persian Letters"), a set of epistles sent by "Persians" wondering the French moral.
Montesquieu is best known as a political philosopher with his masterpiece "De l'esprit des lois" ("On the Spirit of Law", 1748) in which he outlined various state forms from history. He coined the idea that there are three branches of government: the legislative authority (making law), the executive authority (taking care that the citizens live by the law) and the judiciary authority (punishing those who do not abide the law and settles disputes that opposes one citizen to another).
Montesquieu then went on to insist that ideally the three authorities should be separated, in order to give the citizens a sense of freedom.

Thomas Aquinas was born in Sicily in 1225 and died in present-day Italy in 1274.
Aquinas joined the Dominican Order and taught theology at the university of the Sorbonne in Paris.
He contributed to Scholasticism, a medieval philosophical tendency trying to reconcile the Bible with the highlights of Greek philosophy (especially Plato and Aristotle). Scholasticism usually takes a proposition (mostly from Biblical sources) and subjects it to logic reasoning, in order to remove any contradiction.
One of Thomas Aquinas' best known efforts is the proof of God in five ways.
* Things move which sets other things in motion, so ultimately there has to be One that sets things in motion. Thomas named that One God.
* Things cause effects, and these effects produce other effects. But One has to be the ultimate cause of any effect, and Thomas called that One God.
* Some things necessitate others. But there has to be One that necessitates Oneself, otherwise there would be nothing. And that One is what Thomas called God.
* Some phenomena are purer than others. And Thomas called the purest of all God.
* Whilst most natural beings follow the natural law to a common good, there are also actions towards a greater good of which the natural beings are unaware. And Thomas called this greater good God.

Pythagoras (probably 570 BC - ca. 493 BC) is one of those ancient people of whom biographical details are scarce, and the few data we have are not always reliable. Most historians agree that Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, at that time one of the scientific hubs of the world.
Pythagoras is best known for the theorem about rectangular triangles ascribed to him, but probably the Babylonians had already postulated this theorem.
As for Pythagorean philosophy, he is most associated with numerology - the pseudo-scientific assertion that the numbers corresponding to the letters in a name can be used to determine character traits and even the future of the person bearing this name. Traces of numerology can also be found in the Bible and in the Jewish kabbala.
An interesting idea Pythagoras would have published, is metempsychosis: when some living being dies, its soul is immediately transferred to another living being. Pythagoras would have recognized the yelping of a dog as the cries of a recently deceased friend of the philosopher.
Was Pythagoras influenced by the Hindu and Buddhist theories of reincarnation? We'll probably never know, but the metempsychosis closely resembles reincarnation.

Confucius is the latinized name of the Chinese born Kong Qiu (born about 551 BC and died about 479 BC). Confucius was born in a town in the then-duchy of Lu (nowadays Shandong province).
He emphasized study of the classic texts of previous philosophers, insisting he was only someone to transmit earlier thoughts, without adding new ones. Nevertheless Confucius is generally considered one of the greatest Chinese philosophers ever.
In Confucius' philosophy everything starts with knowledge (perhaps "understanding" would be a better translation) of the ancient texts. One who thoroughly understands the virtue of the ancestors can become a virtuous thinker and hence a virtuous servant of society. Ethics comprise virtuous behaviour towards the ancestors (by respectfully executing the rituals), virtuous behaviour towards the social and political institutions (a due submittance to the powers that be, but warning them about errors they're likely to commit), and virtuous behaviour towards the others (daily etiquette).

There are no contemporary sources found about the life of Siddharta Gautama, better known as Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. One source mentions 563 BC as Buddha's date of birth, another mentions 480 BC.
However, some biographical details are generally agreed upon. Born into the noble family of Gautama in Nepal, the teen Siddharta renounced all his worldly possessions and his title, and started a life as a wandering ascetic, a mendicant meditating about the meaning of life. At a certain moment he sat down under a bodhi tree (a kind of fig tree) and found nirvana (a heavenly state of bliss). He then declared "I am Aware" - in Sanskrit "Buddha".
After this glorious result of meditation, Buddha travelled across India and South-East Asia to explain his philosophy and how he came to it.
Later texts summarize Buddha's teachings as the Eightfold Path:
- Right view (the awareness of the finity of all worldly being)
- Right resolve (the decision to abandon all worldly attachments)
- Right speech (do not lie or cheat)
- Right action (do no harm)
- Right livelihood (do not trade in what causes harm, such as weapons or meat)
- Right effort (try not to depend on your senses)
- Right mindfulness (aspire to be aware of the universal truth)
- Right samadhi, sometimes translated as right practice (the method of achieving right mindfulness, including styles of meditation)

Mahmoud was born in Damietta, Egypt in 1905 and died in 1993. He studied philosophy in Cairo and in London, and his main idea was to reconcile the Islamic religious tradition with modern scientific thought.
Although science rejects any beliefs that cannot be tested and validates only what is not falsified after numerous empirical trails, Mahmoud claims that (Islamic) religion and traditional beliefs should be upheld also, because society needs something else than pure scientific thought too.
I could give this example: scientific research allows to alter the DNA of a new offshoot in order to enhance living creatures - but pure science does not set a limit to the extent to which the DNA is genetically modified. Is it alright to alter the DNA of grapevines to make them more resistant to certain diseases? And would it be ethically responsible to alter human DNA to prevent anyone being born with Down syndrome? Philosophers, moralists and ethicists have to answer these questions - medical scientists would just answer "it is possible".

Boff was born in 1938 in the province of Santa Catarina in Brazil. He joined the Franciscan order in 1959 and studied theology at Munich, in Germany.
Boff was one of the leading figures in the (mostly South-American) Liberation Theology, a branch of Roman Catholicism which emphasizes concern for the poorest people in society, aiding them financially and politically. The Roman Catholic Church was at odds with Liberation Theology and has condemned it as mixing religion with Marxism, because Marx was one of the utmost adversaries of religion.
And yet Boff's teachings may be very well in accordance with the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. In many instances in the Gospels Jesus Christ incites the disciples to share everything they have with the needy. See for instance Matthew 6:24 : "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (King James Version)