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The 5th and 4th centuries B.C represent the classical period of Hellas. Of a galaxy of talent which has immortalized ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle may be said to be the most outstanding. Plato was born in an aristocratic family and lived at a time when the best days of Athenian democracy were over. He studied for eight years with Socrates and on the latter’s death he traveled, for more than a decade, to Megara, Cyrene, Egypt and Southern Italy.
Aristotle was born at Stagira in Thrace in 384 B.C. and died in 322 B.C. He studied in Plato's Academy for about seventeen years, served as Alexander's tutor and then kept his school in the Lyceum for about twelve years. He was profoundly influenced by the prevailing political degeneration of the Greek city-states as evidenced by Philip's easy victories over them. Aristotle was the greatest of Plato's disciples and he took his inspiration on many things from his celebrated teacher.
Machiavelli was born in Florence (Italy) in 1469 and he died in 1527. He entered public service and was appointed Secretary of' Ten in the Government of Florence in 1498. The nature of his duties enabled him to have first-hand knowledge of home and foreign Politics. He was versed in statecraft, for he served his state in the capacity of an ambassador as many as twenty three times and among other places, was sent to Paris, to Rome and to the court of Caesar Borgia.
Thomas Hobbes born at Westport in North
Wilts was man of a very studious, orderly and timid nature. He left England
during the civil war. France of the absolute monarchy rather than parliamentary
England was his spiritual home. He live fro about 20 years on the continent
chiefly in France whose autocratic government appealed to him considerably.
While on the continent, he met many philosophers and studies many forms
of government.
John Locke was an eminent English philosopher who founded
the school of empiricism and defended the idea of social contract. Locke
was born in the village of Wrington, Somerset on August 29, 1632. He was
educated at the University of Oxford and lectured on Greek, rhetoric and
moral philosophy at Oxford from 1661 to 1664. In 1667 he began his association
with the English statesman Anthony Ashley Cooper,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (1712-1778) was a Swiss-born French philosopher, social and political theorist, musician, botanist, and one of the most eloquent writers of the Age of Enlightenment. Rousseau was born in Geneva on June 18, 1712, and was raised by an aunt and uncle following the death of his mother a few days after his birth. He was apprenticed at the age of 13 to an engraver, but after three years he ran away and became secretary and companion to Madame Louise de Warens,
Jeremy Bentham was the real founder of the utilitarian
school of political philosophy. He represented a type of mind in England
that had revolutionized industry through the application of steam to it.
Born in 1748 Bentham soon showed that he was an intellectual prodigy. He
went to Oxford but later entertained a poor opinion of the education he
received there. From Oxford he went to Lincoln’s Inn in London to
receive his legal training. Bentham had a scientific bent of mind, given
to introspection.
John Stuart Mill was trained up by his father, James Mill
and John Austin. In his earlier days, Mill was very considerably influenced
by Bentham's philosophy and its reforming programme. But with the passage
of time, many of the evils, against which the early utilitarians laboured
hard, ceased to exist and Benthamism began yielding place to other philosophic
systems. The biological speculations of Darwin and Spencer and the
sociological researches of Auguste Comte had set in motion new currents
of thought and John Stuart Mill was not uninfluenced by them. J. S. Mill
while still a utilitarian
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818. He studied at the University of Welimar, mixed with revolutionaries, went to Berlin and began to study economics there. He was then asked to leave Prussia. He went to Paris, met proudhon and read to writings of some French radicals there. Marx was very considerably influenced by Hegelian dialectics and by the English socialists and economists like Adam Smith, Ricarde and William Thompson. He borrowed for instance his ideas regarding his theory of surplus value from William Thompson’s inquiry into the Principles of the distribution of Wealth, published in 1826.
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