Philosophers Educational Posters & Prints, “S...-”
individuals who made contributions to the study of knowledge itself.

Friedrich Schiller
Arthur Schopenhauer
Seneca

Adam Smith
Socrates
Solon

Baruch Spinoza
Sun-Tzu
Emanuel Swedenborg

Friedrich Schiller
b. 11-10-1759; Marbach, Germany
d. 5-9-1805

Friedrich Schiller, philosopher, poet, historian, & dramatist, inspired Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” with his poem “An die Freude”. Schiller also had a deep friendship with Goethe.

Friedrich Schiller quotes ~
• “A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.”
• “Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.”
• “Art is the daughter of freedom.”
• “Freedom can occur only through education.”
• “Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.”
• “In the society, where people are just parts in a larger machine, individuals are unable to develop fully.”

• On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller

Arthur Schopenhauer
b. 2-22-1788; Danzig (Gdansk), Prussia
d. 9-21-1860; Frankfurt, Germany

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is best remembered for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. His doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal world, was published at age 25.

His most influential work, The World as Will & Representation, asserted that the world is fundamentally what humans recognize in themselves as their “will”. In analyzing “will” he came to the conclusion that humanity's emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled and that a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the ascetic teachings of Vedanta, Buddhism, and the Church Fathers of early Christianity, was the only way to attain liberation.

Arthur Schopenhauer quotes ~
• “The goal is not so much to see that which no one has seen, but to see that which everyone sees, in a totally different way.”
• “Pride is an established conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some particular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.”
• “Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.”
• “Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.”
• “Compassion is the basis of all morality.”
• “The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”
• “There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.”
• “It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.” ~ in a letter to Goethe
• “When the Church says that, in the dogmas of religion, reason is totally incompetent and blind, and its use to be reprehended, this really attests the fact that these dogmas are allegorical in their nature, and are not to be judged by the standard which reason, taking all things sensu proprio, can alone apply. Now the absurdities of a dogma are just the mark and sign of what is allegorical and mythical in it. In the case under consideration, however, the absurdities spring from the fact that two such heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and New Testaments had to be combined. The great allegory was of gradual growth. Suggested by external and adventitious circumstances, it was developed by the interpretation put upon them, an interpretation in quiet touch with certain deep-lying truths only half realised. The allegory was finally completed by Augustine, who penetrated deepest into its meaning, and so was able to conceive it as a systematic whole and supply its defects.
~ “The Christian System” in ‘Religion: A Dialogue, and Other Essays’ (1910) as translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders, p. 105
• “National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.”
• “Rascals are always sociable — more’s the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others’ company.”

Seneca
b. c. 4 BC; Cordoba, Hispania (?)
d. 65 AD

Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and humorist, Seneca the Younger, was tutor and later advisor, to emperor Nero.

Seneca was forced to commit suicide for allegedlyconspiring to assassinate Nero (he may have been innocent).

Seneca quotes ~
• “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
• “A great fortune is a great slavery.”
• “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”
• “As long as you live, keep learning how to live.”
• “A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.”
• “A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.”
• “A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.”

Adam Smith
bap. 6-5-1723; Kirkcaldy, Scotland
d. 7-17-1790; Edinburgh

Social philosopher, the father of modern economics and capitalism, and one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature, and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations.

Considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics, The Wealth of Nations, earned him an enormous reputation and would become one of the most influential works on economics ever published.

Adam Smith quotes ~
• “Science is organized knowledge.”
• “The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”
• “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
• “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.”
• “A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more, otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.”
• “Labour was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.”
• “But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”

Socrates
b. c. 470 BC; Greece
d. c. 399 BC

Socrates, one of the founders of Western philosophy, is known through the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon. The Socratic method of education is the asking of questions where the responses help open insights into the problem or issue.

Socrates, called a “gadfly" because of his stinging comments, was tried and found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and the impiety of not believing in the gods of the state, was executed by drinking poison hemlock.

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

Solon
b. c. 638 BC; Greece
d. c. 558 BC; Cyprus

Statesman, lawmaker, and poet Solon is best remembered for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens. He was not successful though his work laid the foundations of Athenian democracy.

Solon was also a traveler - according to Herodotus he met with Croesus in Sardis.

Baruch Spinoza
b. 11-23-1632; Amsterdam (Dutch Republic)
d. 2-21-1677; The Hague

Spinoza laid the philosophical groundwork for the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism.

Sun Tzu
b. c. 544 BC (traditional); China
d. c. 496 BC (traditional)

Ancient Chinese philosopher and general Sun Tzu is traditionally believed to have authored The Art of War, a treatise on winning battles. Sun Tzu saw the ideal leader as a Taoist master, a spiritual aspect that adds the dimension of diplomacy, planning and resolving conflicts.

Sun Tzu quotes ~
• “Possessions make you poor, wealth is measurable only in experience.”
• “All war is deception.”
• “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.”
• “In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.”
• “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”
• “You have to believe in yourself.”

Emanuel Swedenborg
b. 1-29-1688; Stockholm, Sweden
d. 3-28-1772

Swedenborg was a Swedish philosopher, Christian mystic, and theologian who had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. Notable people who were influenced by Swedenborg include William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, August Strindberg, Charles Baudelaire, Balzac, William Butler Yeats, John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman, William James, and Helen Keller.

Emanuel Swedenborg quotes ~
• “He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil.”
• “Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.”
• “True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.”

• Collected Works of Emanuel Swedenborg