Philosophers Educational Posters & Prints, pg 3/4
for social studies classrooms and homeschoolers.

Immanuel Kant Giclee Print

Immanuel Kant
b. 4-22-1724; East Prussia
d. 2-12-1804

Kant, one of the most influential thinkers of the late Age of Enlightment where Reason was considered the primary basis and source of authority, wrote Critique of Pure Reason, a critical investigation of reason itself, Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgement, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.

Kant referred to his non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy as his “Copernican revolution”, maintaining that understanding the external world is based both experience and a priori concepts, or ideas independent of experience. Carl Jung saw the archetypes as a priori patterns of the psyche.

Immanuel Kant quotes ~
• “The active faculty of the human mind...the capacity of a being to act in conformity with his own representations is what constitutes the life of such a being.”
• “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”
• “But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.”
• “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
• “In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”
• “May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.”
• “Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.”

The a priori is the unseen basis of the unity of the diverse aspects of our ordinary experience.

• Metaphysics of Morals

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher, Giclee Print

Søren Kierkegaard
b. 5-5-1813; Denmark
d. 11-1-1855; Copenhagen

Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher and theologian, is noted for his search for meaning expressd in his ideas of “subjectivity” and “leap of faith”. Kierkegaard, who suffered from melancholia, said, “I saved my life by telling stories.” In his life time Kierkegaard was rideculed for his attacks on the political and materialism of the State Christian Church of Denmark.

Soren Kierkegaard quotes ~
• “A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.”
• “Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.”
• “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”
• “People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

• Soren Kierkegaard: A Biography

Alain Leroy Locke, Photographic Print

Alain LeRoy Locke
b. 9-13-1885; Pennsylvania
d. 6-9-1954; NYC

Philosopher Alain LeRoy Locke an educator and patron of the arts best known for his writings on and about the Harlem Renaissance. Called by some the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance”, he was a motivating force in keeping the energy and passion of the Movement at the forefront.

Locke was the first African American Rhodes Scholar and chairman of the Howard University philosophy department.

Alain LeRoy Locke quotes ~
• “The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem.”
• “It must be increasingly recognized that the Negro has already made very substantial contributions, not only in his folk-art, music especially, which has always found appreciation, but in larger, though humbler and less acknowledged ways. For generations the Negro has been the peasant matrix of that section of America which has most undervalued him, and here he has contributed not only materially in labor and in social patience, but spiritually as well. The South has unconsciously absorbed the gift of his folk-temperament. In less than half a generation it will be easier to recognize this, but the fact remains that a leaven of humor, sentiment, imagination and tropic nonchalance has gone into the making of the South from a humble, unacknowledged source.” The New Negro, 1920
• “. . . not by way of the forced and worn formula of Romaticism, but throught the closeness of an imagination that has never broken kinship with nature. Art must accept such gifts, and revaluate the giver.”

• The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond

John Locke Giclee Print

John Locke
b. 8-29-1632; England
d. 10-28-1704

John Locke defined a person as “a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it”... (Essay on Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 27, Section 9).

John Locke quotes ~
• “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”
• “Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.”
• “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”

• Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration

Martin Luther Giclee Print Lucas Cranach

Martin Luther
b. 11-11-1483; Germany
d. 2-18-1546

Martin Luther was a monk and theologian whose invitation “Out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light” to publically discuss Ninety-Five Theses of reforming the Catholic Church, changed the course of Western civilization.

Martin Luther quotes ~
• “Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.”
• “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
• “Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.”

• Bondage of the Will

Maimonides
b. 3-28-1138; Cordoba, Spain
d. 12-13-1204; Egypt

Philosopher Moses Maimonides was also a rabbi and physician. He is considered foundational to Judaism.

Maimonides quotes ~
• “Anticipate charity by preventing poverty.”
• "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
• “No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.”
• “Further, there are things of which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other; and when man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must be able to comprehend everything.”
• “The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.”
• “Teach thy tongue to say ‘I do not know,’ and thou shalt progress.”

• The Guide for the Perplexed

Marcus Aurelius
b. 4-26-121; Cordoba, Spain
d. 3-17-180; Marrakesh, Morocco

Marcus Aurelius quotes ~
• “A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”
• “Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.”
• “Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.”
• “Do every act of your life as if it were your last.”
• “How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.”
• “Poverty is the mother of crime.”

• The Halieutic and Cynegetica
• The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Karl Marx
b. 5-5-1818; Germany
d. 3-14-1883; London

Karl Marx, a philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist, and revolutionary, is credited with formulating the ideas that are the foundation of modern communism. Marx summarized his approach in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Karl Marx quotes ~
• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
• “Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.”
• “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
• “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
• “In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.”
• “Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.”
• “Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.”
• “Religion is the opium of the masses.”

• Marx : Selected Writings from 'Communist Manifesto', 'Wages, Price and Profit', 'Capital', 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Thomas Robert Malthus
b. 2-13-1766; England
d. 12-13-1834; London

• An Essay on the Principle of Population
• Charles Darwin posters

John Stuart Mill
b. 5-20-1806; London
d. 5-8-1873; Avignon, France

• A System of Logic
• Mill Quote Originality poster
• Mill Quote Civilization poster

Pico Della Mirandola
b. 2-24-1463; Italy
d. 11-17-1494

• Syncretism in the West : Pico's 900 Theses (1486) : The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems : With a Revised Text, English Translation, and Commentary

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
b. 2-28-1533; France
d. 9-3-1592

• The Complete Essays
• authors posters

The Ascension of the Prophet Mohammed

• Islam posters

Friedrich Nietzsche
b. 10-15-1844; Germany
d. 8-25-1900

Friedrich Nietzsche, a 19th century philosopher, deeply questioned religion, morality, culture and science of an increasingly objectified and materialistic world, echoing American Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was the youngest person to ever hold professorhip as the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. While accused of being the inspiration for nazism, he actually broke with his anti-Semetic editor and found his sister and brother-in-laws efforts to establish a “Germanic” colony in Paraguay laughable. Regretably it was his estranged sister and mother who “edited” his writings and estate during his mental breakdown and death.

Carl Gustav Jung read Nietzsche as a student and “spoke informally to members of his inner circle about a thinker whose works had not only overwhelmed him with the depth of their understanding of human nature but also provided the philosophical sources of many of his own psychological and metapsychological ideas” between 1934-39.

Friedrich Nietzsche quotes ~
• “All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.”
• “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
• “Art is the proper task of life.”
• “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”
• “He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.”
• “In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.”
• “Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
• “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
• “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

• Nietzsche's Dancers : Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and the Revaluation of Christian Values

Novalis
b. 5-2-1772; Germany
d. 3-25-1801

Novalis was the pen name for Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, a philosopher, mystic and civil engineer closely associated with German Romanticism.

Novalis chose to write much of his work as ‘literary fragments’ - deliberate writings meant to be unfinished.

Novals quotes ~
• “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
• “A character is a completely fashioned will.”
• “I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.”
• “Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.”
• “Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.”
• “Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.”
• “Where children are, there is the golden age.”

• The Birth of Novalis: Friedrich Von Hardenberg's Journal of 1797, With Selected Letters and Documents