1.
Potsdam
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Potsdam is the capital and largest city of the German federal state of Brandenburg. It directly borders the German capital Berlin and is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region and it is situated on the River Havel,24 kilometres southwest of Berlins city centre. Potsdam was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Kaiser, around the city there are a series of interconnected lakes and cultural landmarks, in particular the parks and palaces of Sanssouci, the largest World Heritage Site in Germany. The Potsdam Conference in 1945 was held at the palace Cecilienhof, the Filmstudio Babelsberg is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Potsdam developed into a centre of science in Germany in the 19th century, today, there are three public colleges, the University of Potsdam, and more than 30 research institutes in the city. The area was formed from a series of large moraines left after the last glacial period, today, the city is three-quarters green space, with just a quarter as urban area. There are about 20 lakes and rivers in and around Potsdam, such as the Havel, the Griebnitzsee, Templiner See, Tiefer See, Jungfernsee, Teltowkanal, Heiliger See, the highest point is the 114-metre high Kleiner Ravensberg. Potsdam is divided into seven city districts and nine new Ortsteile. The appearances of the city districts are quite different, the districts in the north and in the centre consist mainly of historical buildings, the south of the city is dominated by larger areas of newer buildings. Potsdam has an Oceanic climate, with cool, snowy winters, the average winter high temperature is 3.5 °C, with a low of −1.7 °C. Snow is common in the winter, summers are mild, with a high of 23.6 °C and a low of 12.7 °C. The name Potsdam originally seems to have been Poztupimi, a common theory is that it derives from an old West Slavonic term meaning beneath the oaks, i. e. the corrupted pod dubmi/dubimi. The area around Potsdam shows occupancy since the Bronze Age and was part of Magna Germania as described by Tacitus. After the great migrations of the Germanic peoples, Slavs moved in and it was first mentioned in a document in 993 AD as Poztupimi, when Emperor Otto III gifted the territory to the Quedlinburg Abbey, then led by his aunt Matilda. By 1317, it was mentioned as a small town and it gained its town charter in 1345. In 1573, it was still a market town of 2,000 inhabitants. Potsdam lost nearly half of its due to the Thirty Years War. After the Edict of Potsdam in 1685, Potsdam became a centre of European immigration and its religious freedom attracted people from France, Russia, the Netherlands and Bohemia
2.
Kingdom of Prussia
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It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. Prussia was a power from the time it became a kingdom, through its predecessor, Brandenburg-Prussia. Prussia continued its rise to power under the guidance of Frederick II, more known as Frederick the Great. After the might of Prussia was revealed it was considered as a power among the German states. Throughout the next hundred years Prussia went on to win many battles and it was because of its power that Prussia continuously tried to unify all the German states under its rule. Attempts at creation of a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation which lasted from 1867–1871, created a union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, the German Empire lasted from 1871–1918 with the successful unification of all the German states under Prussian hegemony. This was due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power. Prussia is considered the predecessor of the unified German Reich. The Kingdom left a significant cultural legacy, today notably promoted by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, in 1415 a Hohenzollern Burgrave came from the south to the March of Brandenburg and took control of the area as elector. In 1417 the Hohenzollern was made an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, after the Polish wars, the newly established Baltic towns of the German states including Prussia, suffered many economic setbacks. Many of the Prussian towns could not even afford to attend political meetings outside of Prussia, the towns were poverty stricken, with even the largest town, Danzig, having to borrow money from elsewhere to pay for trade. Poverty in these towns was partly caused by Prussias neighbors, who had established and developed such a monopoly on trading that these new towns simply could not compete and these issues led to feuds, wars, trade competition and invasions. However, the fall of these gave rise to the nobility, separated the east and the west. It was clear in 1440 how different Brandenburg was from the other German territories, not only did it face partition from within but also the threat of its neighbors. It prevented the issue of partition by enacting the Dispositio Achillea which instilled the principle of primogeniture to both the Brandenburg and Franconian territories, the second issue was solved through expansion
3.
Tegel
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Tegel is a locality in the Berlin borough of Reinickendorf on the shore of Lake Tegel. The Tegel locality, the second largest in area of the 96 Berlin districts, the Tegel Palace, originally a Renaissance manor house from 1558 and a hunting lodge of Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, was bequested to the Humboldt family in 1797. Alexander von Humboldt and Wilhelm von Humboldt lived here for several years, in 1824 Wilhelm had the palace rebuilt in a Neoclassical style by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. In the park is a tomb, where Alexander, Wilhelm, from 1927 until 1931 Tegel Palace was the site of a sanatorium, founded by the psychoanalyst Ernst Simmel. From 1898 on Tegel was the seat of the Borsig-Werke steam locomotive manufacturing company until it moved to Hennigsdorf in Brandenburg in 1931, between 1930 and 1934 an artillery firing range in the district was used by the Verein für Raumschiffahrt for experiments with liquid-fueled rockets. The principal names involved were its leader Rudolf Nebel and other staff members Hermann Oberth, Tegel was the site of a medium wave broadcasting station from 1933 to 1948. A wire hung in a tower served as an antenna. This tower was demolished as part of the construction of Tegel International Airport at the end of 1948, Tegel is chiefly known for being the location of Berlin-Tegel Otto Lilienthal, Berlins main airport. It also houses the Tegel Penitentiary, Germanys largest prison with about 1,700 inmates as of 2007, one of Berlins largest shopping malls Borsighallen is located in the former locomotive manufacturing halls of the Borsigwerke. There is also the Villa Borsig at the shore of Lake Tegel, today it is a school for future diplomats. Beside this Tegel is a residential district with some industry. With the large Lake Tegel, set in woodlands, the locality is also a destination for daytrippers. It boasts Berlins oldest tree, called Dicke Marie, westend is served by the Berlin S-Bahn line S25 at the station Berlin-Tegel. U-Bahn connection to the city is provided by the U6 line with the stations Otisstraße, Holzhauser Straße, Borsigwerke. Tegel Forest Lake Tegel Media related to Tegel at Wikimedia Commons Tegel page of Reinickendorfer site Launch site of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt at Berlin-Tegel
4.
Viadrina European University
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Viadrina European University is a university located at Frankfurt in Brandenburg, Germany. It is also known as the University of Frankfurt, the city is on the Oder River, which marks the border between Germany and Poland. With 5,200 students — around 1,000 of whom come from Poland — and some 160 teaching staff, the Viadrina is one of Germanys smallest universities. The Latin word Viadrina means belonging to, or situated at, the Oder River, it derives from Viadrus, the name of a presumed river god of the Oder. Actually, an ancient name of the river is not documented, the Alma Mater Viadrina was founded on 26 April 1506 by Elector Joachim I Nestor, with permission from Pope Julius II, as the first principal university of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The foundation stone was already in 1498 at the site of a demolished synagogue. The notable theologian Konrad Wimpina became founding prorector, construction of the main buildung was completed in 1507. The university was organized into four Faculties of Arts, law, theology, philosophy, within the first year, more than 900 students from all over Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark enrolled. The Viadrina enjoyed an excellent reputation in Brandenburg and the regions, and its graduates had high positions in administration, politics, law. One of its earliest chancellors, Bishop Georg von Blumenthal was an opponent of the Protestant Reformation. In 1518 Johann Tetzel obtained his doctorate at Frankfurt, nevertheless, the University, like its Prussian counterpart, the University of Königsberg established in 1544, turned to Lutheran orthodoxy. Frederick William also opened the Frankfurt University for Jewish students, against fierce resistance by the teaching staff, while damages of the Thirty Years War still had to be repaired, he had a botanical garden laid out next to the university premises. An anatomical theatre was built in 1684 at the behest of physician Bernhardus Albinus, the complete renovation was accomplished in 1693/94. In the course of the Prussian Reforms during the Napoleonic Wars and it merged with the University of Breslau, the Leopoldina established in 1702 by the Habsburg emperor Leopold I, in order to be competitive with the newly founded University of Berlin. Some of the Viadrina professors did, however, accept positions in Berlin, the old university building was taken over by the City of Frankfurt and turned into a schoolhouse. It was hardly damaged in World War II and first used as a home for refugees from the eastern territories. Afterwards the building stood empty until it was demolished in the early 1960s. Only the arch of the entrance has been preserved as a monument
5.
19th-century philosophy
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Pressures for egalitarianism, and more rapid change culminated in a period of revolution and turbulence that would see philosophy change as well. With the tumultuous years of 1789–1815, European culture was transformed by revolution, war, by ending many of the social and cultural props of the previous century, the stage was set for dramatic economic and political change. European philosophy reflected on, participated in, and drove, many of these changes, Immanuel Kant is a name that most would mention as being among the most important of influences, as is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While both of these philosophers were products of the 18th century and its assumptions, they pressed at the boundaries. In trying to explain the nature of the state and government, Rousseau would challenge the basis of government with his declaration that Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains. Kant, while attempting to preserve axiomic skepticism, was forced to argue that we do not see true reality, all we know of reality is appearances. Since all we can see of reality is appearances, which are subject to certain necessary and subjective forms of perceptions, Hegels distinction between the unknowable and the circumstantially unknown can be seen as the beginnings of Hegels rational system of the universe. Yet another philosopher of the late Enlightenment that was influential in the 19th century was Pierre-Simon Laplace and this is by no means an exhaustive list of all 19th-century philosophy. One of the first philosophers to attempt to grapple with Kants philosophy was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in Wissenschaftslehre, Fichte argues that the self posits itself and is a self-producing and changing process. But it was another of Fichtes students, and former roommate of Schelling and his work revealed the increasing importance of historical thinking in German thought. Arthur Schopenhauer, rejecting Hegel and also materialism, called for a return to Kantian transcendentalism, at the same time adopting atheism and determinism, amongst others. His secular thought became popular in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. This trend of thought survived into the beginning of the century, influencing 20th century philosophical movements such as Neopositivism. One of the most famous opponents of idealism in the first half of the German 19th century was Ludwig Feuerbach, in early 19th century Britain, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill promoted the idea that actions are right as they maximize happiness, and happiness alone. Marx analysed history itself as the progression of dialectics in the form of class struggle, from this it is argued that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Marxism had a influence on the history of the 20th Century. Existentialism as a movement is properly a 20th-century movement, but its major antecedents, Søren Kierkegaard. In the 1840s, academic philosophy in Europe, following Hegel, was almost completely divorced from the concerns of human life
6.
Western philosophy
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Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. The word philosophy itself originated from the Hellenic, philosophia, literally, the scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor with Thales of Miletus and his most noted students were respectively Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus. Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, pythagoreans hold that all is number, giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, Socrates The key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a unified, Socrates used a critical approach called the elenchus or Socratic method to examine peoples views. He aimed to study human things, the life, justice, beauty. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations and he was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisting in drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 B. C, Plato Socrates most important student was Plato. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, some central ideas of Platos dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called becoming. Aristotle Platos most outstanding student was Aristotle, Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and scientist. He wrote books on physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics, Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all western philosophers, including Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, the Neoplatonic and Christian philosophers of Late Antiquity. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the prominent figure of this period was St. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. The foundations of many northern European universities were built in the Middle Ages by waves of Irish, Scottish & English monks from the Celtic Church begun by Columba, see Celtic Christianity. Erigena is said to have been stabbed to death by his students with their pens and his theology would today be called pantheistic, in keeping with Celtic resolutions of pagan and Christian philosophy
7.
History of Berlin
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The history of Berlin starts with its foundation in the 13th century, and later became the capital of the small country of Prussia. Prussia grew rapidly in the 18th and 19th century, and formed the basis of the German Empire in 1871. After 1900 Berlin became a world city, known for its leadership roles in science. It also had a role in manufacturing and finance, during World War II, it was virtually destroyed by bombing, artillery, and ferocious street-by-street fighting. It was split between the victors, and lost its leadership roles. With the reunification of Germany in 1990, Berlin was restored as a capital, the origin of the name Berlin is uncertain. It may have roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, folk etymology connects the name to the German word for bear, Bär. A bear also appears in the coat of arms of the city, the original Slavic town of Berlin was on the eastern bank of the Spree, approximately where the Nikolaiviertel now stands. The first German settlers probably reached the area in the 11th or 12th centuries and they founded a second town, called Cölln, on the island in the Spree now known as the Spreeinsel or Museum Island. In the 12th century the region came under German rule as part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and it was under the Margraves of Brandenburg, that Old Berlin and Cölln received their first town charters in the 13th century. The year 1237 was later taken as the year of founding, as German settlement increased, the Slavic character of the town faded and the two settlements merged into the German town of Berlin-Cölln, they formally merged in 1432. Albert the Bear also bequeathed to Berlin the emblem of the bear, by the year 1400 Berlin and Cölln had 8,000 inhabitants. A great town fire in 1380 damaged most written records of those early years. In 1415, Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, subsequent members of the Hohenzollern family ruled until 1918 in Berlin, first as electors of Brandenburg, then as kings of Prussia, and finally as German emperors. When Berlin became the residence of the Hohenzollerns, it had to give up its Hanseatic League free city status and its main economical activity changed from trade to the production of luxurious goods for the court. 1443 to 1451, The first Berliner Stadtschloss was built on the embankment of the river Spree, at that time Berlin-Cölln had about 8,000 inhabitants. Population figures rose fast, leading to poverty,1448, The inhabitants of Berlin rebelled in the Berlin Indignation against the construction of a new royal palace by Elector Frederick II Irontooth. This protest was not successful, however, and the citizenry lost many of its political,1451, Berlin became the royal residence of the Brandenburg electors, and Berlin had to give up its status as a free Hanseatic city
8.
Classical liberalism
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Classical liberalism was first called that in the early 19th century, but was built on ideas of the previous century. It was a response to urbanization, and to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, notable individuals whose ideas contributed to classical liberalism include John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. It drew on the economics of Adam Smith and on a belief in natural law, utilitarianism, the term classical liberalism was applied in retrospect to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from the newer social liberalism. These beliefs were complemented by a belief that labourers could be best motivated by financial incentive and they opposed any income or wealth redistribution, which they believed would be dissipated by the lowest orders. Drawing on ideas of Adam Smith, classical liberals believed that it is in the common interest that all individuals be able to secure their own economic self-interest and they were critical of what would come to be the ideas of the welfare state as interfering in a free market. A landlord, a farmer, a manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, in the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as possible, in a free market, both labour and capital would receive the greatest possible reward, while production would be organised efficiently to meet consumer demand. For society to guarantee positive rights requires taxation over and above the minimum needed to enforce negative rights. in the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, neo-classical liberalism advocated Social Darwinism, right-libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism. Friedrich Hayek identified two different traditions within classical liberalism, the British tradition and the French tradition, the French tradition included Rousseau, Condorcet, the Encyclopedists and the Physiocrats. This tradition believed in rationalism and sometimes showed hostility to tradition and religion, Hayek also rejected the label laissez faire as originating from the French tradition and alien to the beliefs of Hume and Smith. Classical liberalism in Britain developed from Whiggery and radicalism, and was heavily influenced by French physiocracy. Whiggery had become a dominant ideology following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the origins of rights were seen as being in an ancient constitution, which had existed from time immemorial. These rights, which some Whigs considered to include freedom of the press and they believed that the power of the executive had to be constrained. While they supported limited suffrage, they saw voting as a privilege, British radicals, from the 1790s to the 1820s, concentrated on parliamentary and electoral reform, emphasising natural rights and popular sovereignty. Richard Price and Joseph Priestley adapted the language of Locke to the ideology of radicalism, the radicals saw parliamentary reform as a first step toward dealing with their many grievances, including the treatment of Protestant Dissenters, the slave trade, high prices and high taxes. There was greater unity to classical liberalism ideology than there had been with Whiggery, classical liberals were committed to individualism, liberty and equal rights
9.
Humboldtian model of higher education
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The Humboldtian model of higher education is a concept of academic education that emerged in the early 19th century and whose core idea is a holistic combination of research and studies. Sometimes called simply the Humboldtian Model, it integrates the arts, the concept of holistic academic education was an idea of Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher, government functionary and diplomat. As a privy councillor in the Interior Ministry, he reformed the Prussian school and he founded the University of Berlin and appointed distinguished scholars to teach and research there. Several scholars have called him the most influential official in German history. Humboldt sought to create a system based on unbiased knowledge and analysis, combining research. The University of Berlin was later named him and his brother. Humboldts model was based on two ideas of the Enlightenment, the individual and the world citizen, Humboldt believed that the university should enable students to become autonomous individuals and world citizens by developing their own reasoning powers in an environment of academic freedom. Humboldt had studied the Greek classics since his youth and he is a prominent example of Eliza Marian Butlers thesis about the important role of Ancient Greek literature and art in 19th-century German thinking. The vehicle for this task was to be the university, the cultural-historical background of the Humboldtian model answered the demands of the Bildungsbürgertum for enhanced general knowledge. The Bildungsbürgertum led the Prussian reforms of the early 19th century, Humboldt believed that teaching should be guided by current research, and that research should be unbiased and independent from ideological, economic, political or religious influences. The Humboldtian model strives for unconditional academic freedom in the investigation of the world. Study should be guided by humanistic ideals and free thought, and knowledge should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism rather than authority, tradition, or dogma. In line with the concept of Wissenschaft, Humboldt regarded philosophy as the link between the different academic disciplines, which include both humanities and natural sciences. Humboldt encouraged the University of Berlin to operate according to scientific, as opposed to market-driven, principles such as curiosity, freedom of research, nevertheless, Humboldt was a political conservative and saw the state as the major player in educational matters. In 1920 George Peabody Gooch said that Humboldts idea of the state could only be realized in a community of Humboldts, in fact, the German system emerged from innovations both before and after 1810. Among other scholars, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, niemals wieder hatte ein deutscher Unterrichtsminister eine stolzere Berufungsliste vorzuweisen. In addition to Humboldt, the group of reformers in Prussia included philosophers such as Fichte and Schleiermacher, Humboldt was aware of other German philosophers educational concepts, such as Kant, Hegel and Fichte. Schleiermacher was an important influence on the Berlin university and these principles, in particular the idea of the research-based university, rapidly made an impact both in Germany and abroad
10.
Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who is considered a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy and his beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics. Politically, Kant was one of the earliest exponents of the idea that peace could be secured through universal democracy. He believed that this will be the outcome of universal history. Kant wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, Kant argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of our minds. In his view, the shapes and structures experience so that, on an abstract level. Among other things, Kant believed that the concepts of space and time are integral to all human experience, as are our concepts of cause, Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, which dealt with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. His mother, Anna Regina Reuter, was born in Königsberg to a father from Nuremberg. His father, Johann Georg Kant, was a German harness maker from Memel, Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children, baptized Emanuel, he changed his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student and he was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics, despite his religious upbringing and maintaining a belief in God, Kant was skeptical of religion in later life, various commentators have labelled him agnostic. Common myths about Kants personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwaits introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a strict and disciplined life. He never married, but seemed to have a social life — he was a popular teacher. He had a circle of friends whom he met, among them Joseph Green. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres from Königsberg his whole life, in fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor in Judtschen and in Groß-Arnsdorf
11.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
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Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, an idea that is often attributed to Hegel. Like Descartes and Kant before him, Fichte was motivated by the problem of subjectivity, Fichte also wrote works of political philosophy, he has a reputation as one of the fathers of German nationalism. Fichte was born in Rammenau, Upper Lusatia, the son of a ribbon weaver, he came of peasant stock which had lived in the region for many generations. The family was noted in the neighborhood for its probity and piety, christian Fichte, Johann Gottliebs father, married somewhat above his station. It has been suggested that a certain impatience which Fichte himself displayed throughout his life was an inheritance from his mother, young Fichte received the rudiments of his education from his father. He early showed remarkable ability, and it was owing to his reputation among the villagers that he gained the opportunity for an education than he otherwise would have received. The story runs that the Freiherr von Militz, a country landowner and he was, however, informed that a lad in the neighborhood would be able to repeat the sermon practically verbatim. As a result, the baron took the lad into his protection, Fichte was placed in the family of Pastor Krebel at Niederau near Meissen and there received thorough grounding in the classics. From this time onward, Fichte saw little of his parents, in October 1774, he was attending the celebrated foundation-school at Pforta near Naumburg. This school is associated with the names of Novalis, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, perhaps his education strengthened a tendency toward introspection and independence, characteristics which appear strongly in his doctrines and writings. In 1780, he study at the theology seminary of University of Jena. He was transferred a year later to study at the Leipzig University, Fichte seems to have supported himself at this period of bitter poverty and hard struggle. Freiherr von Militz continued to him, but when he died in 1784, Fichte had to end his studies prematurely. During the years 1784 to 1788, he supported himself in a way as tutor in various Saxon families. In early 1788, he returned to Leipzig in the hope of finding a better employment and he lived in Zurich for the next two years, which was a time of great contentment for him. There he met his wife, Johanna Rahn, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. There he also became in 1793 a member of the Freemasonry lodge Modestia cum Libertate with which Johann Wolfgang Goethe was also connected, in the spring of 1790, he became engaged to Johanna
12.
Christian Jakob Kraus
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Christian Jakob Kraus was a German comparative and historical linguist. A native of Osterode, Kraus studied at the universities of Königsberg, in 1782 he became a professor of practical philosophy and cameralism in Königsberg. A student of Immanuel Kant, Kraus was famous for importing the ideas of Adam Smith into the German academic scene and he was also a librarian of the Königsberg Public Library from 1786 to 1804. Kraus encouraged the East Prussian officials and nobility to improve conditions in the province. Kraus died in Königsberg in 1807, lexikon der Stadt Königsberg Pr. und Umgebung
13.
Johann Gottfried Herder
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Johann Gottfried Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, born in Mohrungen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Herder grew up in a poor household, educating himself from his fathers Bible and songbook. In 1762, a youth of seventeen, he enrolled at the local University of Königsberg. At the same time, Herder became an intellectual protégé of Johann Georg Hamann, although himself an unsociable person, Herder influenced his contemporaries greatly. One friend wrote to him in 1785, hailing his works as inspired by God, a varied field of theorists were later to find inspiration in Herders tantalisingly incomplete ideas. In 1764, now a clergyman, Herder went to Riga to teach and it was during this period that he produced his first major works, which were literary criticism. In 1769 Herder traveled by ship to the French port of Nantes and this resulted in both an account of his travels as well as a shift of his own self-conception as an author. By 1770 Herder went to Strasbourg, where he met the young Goethe and this event proved to be a key juncture in the history of German literature, as Goethe was inspired by Herders literary criticism to develop his own style. This can be seen as the beginning of the Sturm und Drang movement, in 1771 Herder took a position as head pastor and court preacher at Bückeburg under Count Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe. By the mid-1770s, Goethe was an author, and used his influence at the court of Weimar to secure Herder a position as General Superintendent. Herder moved there in 1776, where his outlook shifted again towards classicism, towards the end of his career, Herder endorsed the French Revolution, which earned him the enmity of many of his colleagues. At the same time, he and Goethe experienced a personal split, another reason for his isolation in later years was due to his unpopular attacks on Kantian philosophy. In 1802 Herder was ennobled by the Elector-Prince of Bavaria, which added the von to his last name. He died in Weimar in 1803 at age 59, in 1772 Herder published Treatise on the Origin of Language and went further in this promotion of language than his earlier injunction to spew out the ugly slime of the Seine. Herder now had established the foundations of comparative philology within the new currents of political outlook, Herder wrote that A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world. After becoming General Superintendent in 1776, Herders philosophy shifted again towards classicism, Herder was at his best during this period, and produced works such as his unfinished Outline of a Philosophical History of Humanity which largely originated the school of historical thought. The historian should be the contemporary of the past. Herder gave Germans new pride in their origins, modifying that dominance of regard allotted to Greek art extolled among others by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Herder equated the German with the Gothic and favoured Dürer and everything Gothic
14.
August Schleicher
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August Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, to show how Indo-European might have looked, he created a short tale, Schleichers fable, to exemplify the reconstructed vocabulary and aspects of Indo-European society inferred from it. Schleicher was born in Meiningen, in the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen and he died from tuberculosis at the age of 47 in Jena, in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, in present-day Thuringia. Schleicher was educated at the University of Bonn and taught at the Charles University in Prague and he began his career studying theology and Oriental languages, especially Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and Persian. Influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he formed the theory that a language is an organism, with periods of development, maturity, in 1850, Schleicher completed a monograph systematically describing European languages, Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Übersicht. He explicitly represented languages as perfectly natural organisms that could most conveniently be described using terms drawn from biology, genus, species, Schleicher claimed that he himself had been convinced of the natural descent and competition of languages before he had read Darwin’s Origin of Species. He invented a system of classification that resembled a botanical taxonomy, tracing groups of related languages. His model, the Stammbaumtheorie, was a development in the study of Indo-European languages. He first introduced a representation of a Stammbaum in an article published in 1853 entitled Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen Urvolkes. By the time of the publication of his Deutsche Sprache he had begun to use trees to illustrate language descent, Schleicher is commonly recognized as the first linguist to portray language development using the figure of a tree. Largely in reaction to this, Johannes Schmidt later proposed his Wave Theory as an alternative model, Schleicher believed that languages pass through a life cycle, similar to that of living beings. They start simpler than they will become, Language declines both in sound and in form. The transition from the first to the period is one of slower progress. Schleicher was an advocate of the polygenesis of languages, since languages are continually dying out, whilst no new ones practically arise, there must have been originally many more languages than at present. The number of languages was therefore certainly far larger than has been supposed from the still-existing languages. Schleichers ideas on polygenesis had long-lasting influence, both directly and via their adoption by the biologist Ernst Haeckel, in 1866, August Leskien, a pioneer of research into sound laws, began studying comparative linguistics under August Schleicher at the University of Jena. Bonn, H. B. Koenig Linguistische Untersuchungen, part 2, Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Uebersicht. Koenig, new ed. by Konrad Koerner, Amsterdam, John Benjamins Formenlehre der kirchenslavischen Sprache, Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen Urvolkes
15.
Valentin Voloshinov
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Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov was a Soviet/Russian linguist, whose work has been influential in the field of literary theory and Marxist theory of ideology. Written in the late 1920s in the USSR, Voloshinovs Marxism, the books main inspiration, however, does not come from previous Marxists, whom Voloshinov saw as largely indifferent towards the study of language. To some extent, Voloshinovs linguistic thought is also mediated by the analyses of his Soviet contemporary Nicholas Marr, for Voloshinov, language is the medium of ideology, and cannot be separated from ideology. Ideology, however, is not to be understood in the classical Marxist sense as a mental phenomenon which arises as a reflex of a real material economic substructure. Language, as a socially constructed sign-system, is what allows consciousness to arise, because of this belief that language and human consciousness are closely related, Voloshinov holds that the study of verbal interaction is key to understanding social psychology. Words, for Voloshinov, are dynamic social signs, which take different meanings for different social classes in different historical contexts, the meaning of words is not subject to passive understanding, but includes the active participation of both the speaker and hearer. While every word is a taken from an inventory of available signs. Voloshinovs work can also be seen to many of the concerns of poststructuralism. Charles Sanders Peirce György Lukács Lev Vygotsky Otto Jespersen Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev Russian formalism Jakobson, R. Shifters and Verbal Categories
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Alexander Potebnja
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Alexander Potebnja was a Ukrainian-Russian philosopher and linguist active in the Russian Empire, who was a professor of linguistics at the University of Kharkov. He is well known as a specialist in the evolution of Russian phonetics and he also translated part of Homers Odyssey into Ukrainian. He constructed a theory of language and consciousness that later influenced the thinking of his countryman the Psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his main work was Language and Thought. He was a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Alexander Potebnja was born into a family in 1835 on his familys khutir Manev, near the village of Havrylivka in Romny county. He received his education in the Polish school of the city of Radom. He studied law, history, and philology at Kharkiv University, in the early 1860s he was active in the Ukrainophile Kharkiv hromada, wrote a Ukrainian primer for Sunday schools, and took part in folklore expeditions in Poltava and Okhtyrka counties. His teachers were the brothers Peter and Nikolai Lavrov and Professor Ambrose Metlinsky, in 1862 he published his work Thought and Language, and in the same year he went on a trip abroad. He attended lectures at the University of Berlin, he studied Sanskrit, in 1874 he defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Notes on Russian Grammar. In 1875 he became a professor at Kharkiv University and he also presided over the Kharkiv Historical-Philological Society and was a member of the Czech Scientific Society. As a linguist Potebnja specialized in four areas, the philosophy of language, the phonetics of the East Slavic languages, etymology. He was particularly interested in the relations among language, thought, Language for him was primarily the means by which the mind ordered the influx of impressions and stimuli. Words carry not only a meaning, but also the past experience of the individual, thus a word usually has three aspects, an external form, a meaning, and an internal form. It is through the form that the objective world is subjectivized. In many cases the form is rooted in myth and, hence. These ideas constitute the framework of Potebnjas masters thesis, O nekotorykh simvolakh v slavianskoi narodnoi poezii, with time the consciousness of a words internal form fades, and one of the tasks of literature is to restore this consciousness. Dostoevskom’ in Voprosy teorii i psikhologii tvorchestva, Potebnja viewed the history of a language as the history of its dialects and used the concept of phonetic law, although he often tried to find a psychological basis for the concept. He recognized the existence of a language, but located the beginning of its disintegration into dialects back in prehistoric times
17.
Joxe Azurmendi
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Joxe Azurmendi Otaegi is a Basque writer, philosopher, essayist and poet. He has published articles and books on ethics, politics. He is member of Jakin and the director of Jakin irakurgaiak and he also collaborated with the Klasikoak publishing firm in the Basque translations of various philosophical works and was one of the founders of Udako Euskal Unibertsitatea. He is currently a Professor of Modern Philosophy and a lecturer at Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, in 2010 he was awarded the title honorary academic by Euskaltzaindia. Azurmendi is an intellectual who studies the problem more than the solution, Azurmendis essays cover modern European topics in great depth and knowledge. He has incorporated the philosophy and thinking of European thinkers, especially German ones and he often adopts a polemic tone. In short, in the opinion of many, Joxe Azurmendi is one of the most prolific, Joxe Azurmendi studied philosophy and theology at The University of the Basque Country, Rome and Münster. He has collaborated closely and uninterruptedly with the magazine since its restoration, in that publication he has raised the problems of Basque society in the context of European thinkers. In 1992 he published what was to become his best-known work and they are rough, simple people who nevertheless consider themselves to be the children of God and the heirs to his glory. But they are nothing more than un-Romanised Spaniards. Azurmendis essay refuted and dismantled the stereotypes maintained about the Basques by certain Spanish intellectuals and it was on the threshold of the new millennium, however, that Azurmendis work reached its height. During the early years of the 21st century he published the trilogy formed by Espainiaren arimaz, in this trilogy, Joxe Azurmendi reveals some of his most significant thinking. His work emerged and developed during a marked by a crisis of culture, politics. But it was a crisis that he understood not as something negative, consequently, all his thinking is centred around the defence of freedom in every field, but especially in relation to conscience and thinking. Far from fleeing the crisis, then, his work tries to outline how we can live in this situation, I am not particularly interested in being an apostle of relativism. But as I come from a culture, Im allergic to some things. Truth, Reason and absolute correction were Catholic in that culture, now I hear that postmodern relativism is the cause of the moral misery and the loss of values. It is seen there is a nostalgia of dogmatic culture, disguised with some democratic
18.
John Stuart Mill
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John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham, and contributed significantly to the theory of the scientific method. A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the first Member of Parliament to call for womens suffrage. John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given a rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. Mill was a precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography, at the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesops Fables, Xenophons Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus and he had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy. At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra and his main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study, one of Mills earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk in order to talk about political economy. At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, the mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left an impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, there he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon. Mill went through months of sadness and pondered suicide at twenty years of age, according to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his lifes objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered no, and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective, eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy
19.
Noam Chomsky
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Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as the father of modern linguistics, Chomsky is also a figure in analytic philosophy. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, born to middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking courses in linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. From 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard Universitys Society of Fellows and he is credited as the creator or co-creator of the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a role in the decline of behaviorism. Associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism, while expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the Linguistics Wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later co-wrote an analysis articulating the propaganda model of media criticism, however, his defense of unconditional freedom of speech—including for Holocaust deniers—generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the early 1980s. Following his retirement from teaching, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the War on Terror. One of the most cited scholars in history, Chomsky has influenced an array of academic fields. Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7,1928, in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and his father was William Zev Chomsky, an Ashkenazi Jew originally from Ukraine who had fled to the United States in 1913. Chomskys mother was the Belarusian-born Elsie Simonofsky, a teacher and activist whom William had met while working at Mikveh Israel, Noam was the Chomsky familys first child. His younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, was five years later. The brothers were close, although David was more easygoing while Noam could be very competitive, as a Jew, Chomsky faced anti-semitism as a child, particularly from the Irish and German communities living in Philadelphia. He was substantially influenced by his uncle who owned a newspaper stand in New York City, whenever visiting his uncle, Chomsky frequented left-wing and anarchist bookstores in the city, voraciously reading political literature. He later described his discovery of anarchism as an accident, because it allowed him to become critical of other far-left ideologies, namely Stalinism. Chomskys primary education was at Oak Lane Country Day School, an independent Deweyite institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere. It was here, at age 10, that he wrote his first article, on the spread of fascism, from the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics
20.
Ernst Cassirer
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Ernst Cassirer was a German philosopher. He is one of the leading 20th century advocates of philosophical idealism, born in Breslau in Silesia, into a Jewish family, Cassirer studied literature and philosophy at the University of Marburg and at the University of Berlin. Because he was Jewish, he left Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933, after leaving Germany he taught for a couple of years in Oxford before becoming a professor at Gothenburg University. When Cassirer considered Sweden too unsafe, he applied for a post at Harvard, in 1941 he became a visiting professor at Yale University, then moved to Columbia University in New York City, where he lectured from 1943 until his death in 1945. His son, Heinz Cassirer, was also a Kantian scholar, cassirers first major published writings were a history of modern thought from the Renaissance to Kant. In accordance with his Marburg neo-Kantianism he concentrated upon epistemology, a. Burtt, E. J. Dijksterhuis, and Alexandre Koyré. In Substance and Function, he writes about late nineteenth-century developments in physics including relativity theory, in Einsteins Theory of Relativity he defended the claim that modern physics supports a neo-Kantian conception of knowledge. He also wrote a book about Quantum mechanics called Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics, at Hamburg Cassirer discovered the Library of the Cultural Sciences founded by Aby Warburg. Warburg was an art historian who was interested in ritual. In Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Cassirer argues that man is a symbolic animal, whereas animals perceive their world by instincts and direct sensory perception, humans create a universe of symbolic meanings. Cassirer is particularly interested in language and myth. He argues that science and mathematics developed from natural language, and religion, in 1929 Cassirer took part in an historically significant encounter with Martin Heidegger in Davos. Cassirer argues that while Kants Critique of Pure Reason emphasizes human temporality and finitude, Cassirer challenges Heideggers relativism by invoking the universal validity of truths discovered by the exact and moral sciences. Cassirer believed that reasons self-realization leads to human liberation, mazlish however notes that Cassirer in his The Philosophy of the Enlightenment focuses exclusively on ideas, ignoring the political and social context in which they were produced. In The Logic of the Cultural Sciences Cassirer argues that objective and universal validity can be achieved not only in the sciences, but also in practical, cultural, moral, and aesthetic phenomena. Cassirers last work The Myth of the State was published posthumously, Cassirer sees Nazi Germany as a society in which the dangerous power of myth is not checked or subdued by superior forces. G. The Symbolic Construction of Reality, The Legacy of Ernst Cassirer Folkvord Ingvild & Hoel Aud Sissel, Ernst Cassirer on Form and Technology, Contemporary Readings, Basingstoke, a Parting of the Ways, Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger Gordon, Peter Eli. Continental Divide, Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos Krois, John Michael, Cassirer, Symbolic Forms and History Schilpp, Paul Arthur
21.
Philosopher
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A philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside of either theology or science. The term philosopher comes from the Ancient Greek φιλόσοφος meaning lover of wisdom, the coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras. Typically, these brands of philosophy are Hellenistic ones and those who most arduously commit themselves to this lifestyle may be considered philosophers. The separation of philosophy and science from theology began in Greece during the 6th century BC, thales, an astronomer and mathematician, was considered by Aristotle to be the first philosopher of the Greek tradition. While Pythagoras coined the word, the first known elaboration on the topic was conducted by Plato, in his Symposium, he concludes that Love is that which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore, the philosopher is one who seeks wisdom, if he attains wisdom, therefore, the philosopher in antiquity was one who lives in the constant pursuit of wisdom, and living in accordance to that wisdom. Disagreements arose as to what living philosophically entailed and these disagreements gave rise to different Hellenistic schools of philosophy. In consequence, the ancient philosopher thought in a tradition, as the ancient world became schism by philosophical debate, the competition lay in living in manner that would transform his whole way of living in the world. Philosophy is a discipline which can easily carry away the individual in analyzing the universe. The second is the change through the Medieval era. With the rise of Christianity, the way of life was adopted by its theology. Thus, philosophy was divided between a way of life and the conceptual, logical, physical and metaphysical materials to justify that way of life, philosophy was then the servant to theology. The third is the sociological need with the development of the university, the modern university requires professionals to teach. Maintaining itself requires teaching future professionals to replace the current faculty, therefore, the discipline degrades into a technical language reserved for specialists, completely eschewing its original conception as a way of life. In the fourth century, the word began to designate a man or woman who led a monastic life. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes how his sister Macrina persuaded their mother to forsake the distractions of life for a life of philosophy. Later during the Middle Ages, persons who engaged with alchemy was called a philosopher - thus, many philosophers still emerged from the Classical tradition, as saw their philosophy as a way of life. Among the most notable are René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, with the rise of the university, the modern conception of philosophy became more prominent
22.
Linguistics
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning, phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential sub-sets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology, morphology, modern theories that deal with the principles of grammar are largely based within Noam Chomskys ideological school of generative grammar. In the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between the notions of langue and parole in his formulation of structural linguistics. According to him, parole is the utterance of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract phenomenon that theoretically defines the principles. This distinction resembles the one made by Noam Chomsky between competence and performance in his theory of transformative or generative grammar. According to Chomsky, competence is an innate capacity and potential for language, while performance is the specific way in which it is used by individuals, groups. The study of parole is the domain of sociolinguistics, the sub-discipline that comprises the study of a system of linguistic facets within a certain speech community. Discourse analysis further examines the structure of texts and conversations emerging out of a speech communitys usage of language, Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that language be studied as a linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of scripts in language. Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural, historical and political factors that influence language, through which linguistic, research on language through the sub-branches of historical and evolutionary linguistics also focus on how languages change and grow, particularly over an extended period of time. Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages, lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a vocabulary. Such a documentation of a vocabulary from a particular language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective, specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education, related areas of study also includes the disciplines of semiotics, literary criticism, translation, and speech-language pathology. Before the 20th century, the philology, first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the science of language
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Humboldt University of Berlin
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The Humboldt university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities. In 1949, it changed its name to Humboldt-Universität in honour of both its founder Wilhelm and his brother, geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The first semester at the newly founded Berlin university occurred in 1810 with 256 students and 52 lecturers in faculties of law, medicine, theology, du Bois and European unifier Robert Schuman, as well as the influential surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in the early half of the 1800s. The structure of German research-intensive universities, such as Humboldt, served as a model for institutions like Johns Hopkins University, Alexander von Humboldt, brother of the founder William, promoted the new learning. With the construction of research facilities in the second half of the 19th Century teaching of the natural sciences began. During this period of enlargement, Berlin University gradually expanded to other previously separate colleges in Berlin. An example would be the Charité, the Pépinière and the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum, in 1717, King Friedrich I had built a quarantine house for Plague at the city gates, which in 1727 was rechristened by the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm, Es soll das Haus die Charité heißen. By 1829 the site became Berlin Universitys medical campus and remained so until 1927 when the more modern University Hospital was constructed, Berlin University started a natural history collection in 1810, which, by 1889 required a separate building and became the Museum für Naturkunde. The preexisting Tierarznei School, founded in 1790 and absorbed by the university, also the Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule Berlin, founded in 1881 was affiliated with the Agricultural Faculties of the University. After 1933, like all German universities, it was affected by the Nazi regime, the rector during this period was Eugen Fischer. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service resulted in 250 Jewish professors and employees being fired during 1933/1934, students and scholars and political opponents of Nazis were ejected from the university and often deported. During this time one third of all of the staff were fired by the Nazis. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany ordered the opening of the university in January 1946, the SMAD wanted a redesigned Berlin University based on the Soviet model, however they insisted on the phrasing newly opened and not re-opened for political reasons. The University of Berlin must effectively start again in almost every way and you have before you this image of the old university. What remains of that is nought but ruins, the teaching was limited to seven departments working in reopened, war-damaged buildings, with many of the teachers dead or missing. However, by the semester of 1946, the Economic. This program existed at Berlin University until 1962, the East-West conflict in post-war Germany led to a growing communist influence in the university. This was controversial, and incited strong protests within the student body, Soviet NKVD secret police arrested a number of students in March 1947 as a response
24.
Alexander von Humboldt
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Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher. Humboldts quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, Humboldts advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America and his description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined and this important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity. Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin in Prussia on 14 September 1769 and he was baptized as a baby in the Lutheran faith, with the Duke of Brunswick serving as godfather. At age 42, Alexander Georg was rewarded for his services in the Seven Years War with the post of Royal Chamberlain and he profited from the contract to lease state lotteries and tobacco sales. He first married the daughter of Prussian General Adjutant Schweder, in 1766, Alexander Georg married Maria Elisabeth Colomb, a well-educated woman and widow of Baron Hollwede, with whom she had a son. Alexander Georg and Maria Elisabeth had three children, a daughter, who died young, and then two sons, Wilhelm and Alexander and her first-born son, Wilhelms and Alexanders half-brother, was something of a neer do well, not often mentioned in the family history. Alexander Georg died in 1779, leaving the brothers Humboldt in the care of their emotionally distant mother, Humboldts mother expected them to become civil servants of the Prussian state. The money Baron Holwede left to Alexanders mother became, after her death, instrumental in funding Alexanders explorations, due to his youthful penchant for collecting and labeling plants, shells and insects, Alexander received the playful title of the little apothecary. On April 25,1789, he matriculated at Göttingen, then known for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and his brother Wilhelm was already a student at Göttingen, but they did not interact much since their intellectual interests were quite different. His vast and varied interests were by this time fully developed, at Göttingen he met Georg Forster, a naturalist who had been with Captain James Cook on his second voyage. Humboldt traveled with Forster in Europe, the two traveled to England, Humboldts first sea voyage, The Netherlands, and France. In England, he met Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, the scientific friendship between Banks and Humboldt lasted until Bankss death in 1820, and the two shared botanical specimens for study. Banks also mobilized his scientific contacts in later years to aid Humboldts work, Humboldts scientific excursion up the Rhine resulted in his 1790 treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein. Humboldts passion for travel was of long standing, Humboldts talents were devoted to the purpose of preparing himself as a scientific explorer. During this period, his brother Wilhelm married, but Alexander did not attend the nuptials, Humboldt graduated from the Freiberg School of Mines in 1792 and was appointed to a Prussian government position in the Department of Mines as an inspector in Bayreuth and the Fichtel mountains
25.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
26.
Prussian education system
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The actual Prussian education system was introduced as a basic concept in the late 18th century and was significantly enhanced after Prussias defeat in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars. The Prussian educational reforms inspired other countries and remains important as a biopower in the Foucaultian sense for nation-building, compulsory education on the Prussian example was soon mirrored in Scandinavia, and United States started to adopt the Prussian example. France and the UK failed to introduce similar systems until the 1880s, the term itself is not at all being used in German literature, which refers to the primary aspects of the Humboldtian education ideal respectively as the Prussian reforms. However, the concept remains fruitful and has led to various debates and controversies. 21st century primary and secondary education in Germany and beyond still embodies the legacy of the Prussian education system, the basic foundations of a generic Prussian primary education system were laid out by Frederick the Great with his Generallandschulreglement, a decree of 1763, authored by Johann Julius Hecker. Hecker had already founded the first teachers seminary in Prussia. His concept of providing teachers with the means to cultivate mulberries for homespun silk and it expanded the existing schooling system significantly and required that all young citizens, both girls and boys, be educated by mainly municipality-funded schools from the age of 5 to 13 or 14. Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded, in comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s. The Prussian system consisted of a course of primary education. Mathematics and calculus were not compulsory at the start and taking such courses required additional payment by parents, Frederick the Great also formalized further educational stages, the Realschule and as the highest stage the gymnasium, which served as a university-preparatory school. Construction of schools received state support, but they were often built on private initiative. Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow, a member of the gentry and former cavalry officer in Reckahn, Brandenburg. Von Rochow cooperated with Heinrich Julius Bruns, a teacher of modest background. The two installed a school for rural education that attracted more than 1,200 notable visitors between 1777 and 1794. Training of teachers was increasingly organized via private seminaries, Hecker had already in 1748 founded the first Lehrerseminar, but the density and impact of the seminary system improving significantly until the end of the 18th century. In 1810, Prussia introduced state certification requirements for teachers, which raised the standard of teaching. The final examination, Abitur, was introduced in 1788, implemented in all Prussian secondary schools by 1812, passing the Abitur was a prerequisite to entering the learned professions and higher echelons of the civil service. The state-controlled Abitur remains in place in modern Germany, the Prussian system had strong backing in the traditional German admiration and respect for Bildung as an individuals drive to cultivate oneself from within
27.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
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Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
29.
Margraviate of Brandenburg
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The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806. Also known as the March of Brandenburg, it played a role in the history of Germany. Brandenburg developed out of the Northern March founded in the territory of the Slavic Wends and its ruling margraves were established as prestigious prince-electors in the Golden Bull of 1356, allowing them to vote in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor. The state thus became known as Electoral Brandenburg or the Electorate of Brandenburg. The House of Hohenzollern came to the throne of Brandenburg in 1415, under Hohenzollern leadership, Brandenburg grew rapidly in power during the 17th century and inherited the Duchy of Prussia. The resulting Brandenburg-Prussia was the predecessor of the Kingdom of Prussia, although the electors highest title was King in/of Prussia, their power base remained in Brandenburg and its capital Berlin. Although the Margraviate of Brandenburg ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, despite its meager beginnings in the Holy Roman Empire, the Hohenzollern Kingdom of Prussia achieved the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire in 1871. The Mark Brandenburg is still used today to refer to the federal state of Brandenburg in the Federal Republic of Germany. The territory of the margraviate, commonly known as the Mark Brandenburg, lies in present-day eastern Germany. Geographically it encompassed the majority of the present-day German states Brandenburg and Berlin, the Altmark, parts of the present-day federal state Brandenburg, such as Lower Lusatia and territory which had been Saxon until 1815, were not parts of the Mark. Colloquially but not accurately, the federal state Brandenburg is sometimes identified as the Mark or Mark Brandenburg, the region was formed during the ice age and characterized by moraines, glacial valleys, and numerous lakes. The territory is known as a Mark or march because it was a county of the Holy Roman Empire. The Mark is defined by two uplands and two depressions, the depressions are taken up by rivers and chains of lakes with marsh and boggy soil along the shores, once used for peat collection, the riverbanks are now mostly drained and dry. The Northern or Baltic Uplands of the Mecklenburg Lake Plateau have only minor extensions into Brandenburg, the southern depression is generally to the north of this ridge and appears strikingly in the Spreewald. Between these two depressions is a low plateau that extends from the Poznań area westward to Brandenburg through Torzym, the Spree plateau, the region is predominantly marked by dry, sandy soil, wide stretches of which have pine trees and erica plants, or heath. However, the soil is loamy in the uplands and plateaus and, Mark Brandenburg has a cool, continental climate, with temperatures averaging near 0 °C in January and February and near 18 °C in July and August. Precipitation averages between 500 mm and 600 mm annually, with a modest summer maximum, by the 8th century, Slavic Wends, such as the Sprevjane and Hevelli, started to move into the Brandenburg area. They intermarried with Saxons and Bohemians, the Bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg were established at the beginning of the 10th century
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Province of Brandenburg
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The Province of Brandenburg was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1815 to 1946, from 1871 within the German Reich. The Prussian core territory comprised the bulk of the historic Margraviate of Brandenburg, other neighbouring provinces were Pomerania in the northeast, Silesia in the southeast, and Prussian Saxony in the southwest. Brandenburg also shared a border with the grand duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Beside the Elbe and Oder river areas, the province covered large parts of the Spree, the largest cities were Berlin, located in the centre together with the growing suburbs of Spandau, Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Neukölln. The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Germanic Suebi, during the Migration Period, they were succeeded by the Polabian Slavs, whose fortress at Brandenburg an der Havel was conquered by the German king Henry the Fowler in 928/29. Henry subdued the Slavic tribes up to the Oder river and his son Otto I established the marca Geronis on their territory and his son Margrave Otto I already achieved the dignity of an Arch-Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Empire in 1177. Emperor Charles IV by the Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed the electoral dignity of the Brandenburg margraves, the Elector of Brandenburg held the seventh rank among the electors of the Empire and had five votes in the Council of Princes. In 1415 Brandenburg was acquired by Burgrave Frederick of Nuremberg, the first member of the Swabian House of Hohenzollern to rule the margraviate. By the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau, Frederick William reached full sovereignty in his Prussian territories, the margraviate remained a constituent part of Prussia, until after the Napoleonic Wars and the 1815 Congress of Vienna the kingdoms administration was divided into ten provinces. Most of the Margraviates territory was incorporated into the new Province of Brandenburg, however, the Altmark on the western bank of the Elbe was incorporated into the Prussian Province of Saxony. The Province of Brandenburg also encompassed the territory of Lower Lusatia as well as the area around Belzig and Jüterbog, the Province headed by an Oberpräsident was subdivided into two governorates named after their respective capitals, Potsdam in the northwest and Frankfurt in the southeast. The provincial government was at first situated at the Potsdam royal residence, in 1827, it moved to Berlin, returned to Potsdam in 1843 and in 1918 finally settled in Charlottenburg. The conditions in the countryside remained largely untouched, even during the Revolutions of 1848 that led to violent fights in the streets of Berlin, the large estates had to deal with low soil quality and—except for brown coal occurrences in Lower Lusatia—the lack of natural resources. The provincial life was perpetuated in the novels by Theodor Fontane, the Great Depression helped the Nazi Party to establish itself as an important political power. After the Machtergreifung on 30 January 1933, the Nazi Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube held the office of the Oberpräsident, in the late days of World War II it was the site of the bloody encounters of the Seelow Heights, at Halbe and finally the Battle of Berlin. In 1946, after the war, the Neumark territory east of the Oder–Neisse line was ceded to the Republic of Poland to form the Zielona Gora Voivodeship. The remaining territory became part of the Soviet occupation zone and was transformed into the state of Brandenburg, in 1949, the state of Brandenburg became part of East Germany and, along with the other states of Eastern Germany, in 1952 was dissolved and divided into administrative districts. Brandenburgs territory roughly corresponded with the districts of Potsdam, Frankfurt/Oder, in 1990, following German reunification, Brandenburg was re-established as a state of the Federal Republic of Germany
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Age of Enlightenment
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The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, The Century of Philosophy. In France, the doctrines of les Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy. French historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715, the year that Louis XIV died, and 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution, some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of the scientific revolution. Les philosophes of the widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffee houses. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church, a variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution, earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, and Baruch Spinoza. The major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence, others like James Madison incorporated them into the Constitution in 1787. The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie, the ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by an intellectual movement known as Romanticism. René Descartes rationalist philosophy laid the foundation for enlightenment thinking and his attempt to construct the sciences on a secure metaphysical foundation was not as successful as his method of doubt applied in philosophic areas leading to a dualistic doctrine of mind and matter. His skepticism was refined by John Lockes 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his dualism was challenged by Spinozas uncompromising assertion of the unity of matter in his Tractatus and Ethics. Both lines of thought were opposed by a conservative Counter-Enlightenment. In the mid-18th century, Paris became the center of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity challenging traditional doctrines, the political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution. Francis Hutcheson, a philosopher, described the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words. Much of what is incorporated in the method and some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by his protégés David Hume and Adam Smith. Hume became a figure in the skeptical philosophical and empiricist traditions of philosophy. Immanuel Kant tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the sphere through private
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On Liberty
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On Liberty is a philosophical work by English philosopher John Stuart Mill, originally intended as a short essay. The work, published in 1859, applies Mills ethical system of utilitarianism to society, Mill attempts to establish standards for the relationship between authority and liberty. He emphasizes the importance of individuality which he conceived as a prerequisite to the higher pleasures—the summum bonum of Utilitarianism, furthermore, Mill criticized the errors of past attempts to defend individuality where, for example, democratic ideals resulted in the tyranny of the majority. On Liberty was an influential and well received work, although it did not go without criticism. Some attacked it for its apparent discontinuity with Utilitarianism, while others criticized its vagueness, the ideas presented in On Liberty have remained the basis of much liberal political thought. It has remained in print continuously since its initial publication, to this day, a copy of On Liberty is passed to the president of the British Liberal Democrats as a symbol of office. A copy of the book is also presented to and then held by the president of the Liberal Party as a symbol of office. Mills marriage to his wife Harriet Taylor Mill greatly influenced the concepts in On Liberty, which was finished prior to her death. According to Mills Autobiography, On Liberty was first conceived as an essay in 1854. As the ideas developed, the essay was expanded, rewritten and sedulously corrected by Mill and his wife, Mill, after suffering a mental breakdown and eventually meeting and subsequently marrying Harriet, changed many of his beliefs on moral life and womens rights. Mill states that On Liberty was more directly and literally our joint production than anything else which bears my name, the final draft was nearly complete when his wife died suddenly in 1858. Mill suggests that he made no alterations to the text at this point, the composition of this piece was also indebted to the work of the German thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt, especially his essay On the Limits of State Action. Finally published in 1859, On Liberty was one of Mills two most influential books, because society was—in its early stages—subjected to such turbulent conditions, it was forced to accept rule by a master. However, as mankind progressed, it became conceivable for the people to rule themselves, Mill admits that this new form of society seemed immune to tyranny because there was no fear of tyrannizing over self. Despite the high hopes of the Enlightenment, Mill argues that the ideals were not as easily met as expected. First, even in democracy, the rulers were not always the same sort of people as the ruled. Second, there is a risk of a tyranny of the majority in which the many oppress the few who, in Mills view, tyranny of the majority is worse than tyranny of government because it is not limited to a political function. Where one can be protected from a tyrant, it is harder to be protected against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion
33.
Bertel Thorvaldsen
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Bertel Thorvaldsen was a Danish/Icelandic sculptor of international fame, who spent most of his life in Italy. Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen into a Danish/Icelandic family of humble means, working part-time with his father, who was a wood carver, Thorvaldsen won many honors and medals at the academy. He was awarded a stipend to travel to Rome and continue his education, in Rome, Thorvaldsen quickly made a name for himself as a sculptor. Maintaining a large workshop in the city, he worked in a heroic neo-classicist style and his patrons resided all over Europe. Upon his return to Denmark in 1838, Thorvaldsen was received as a national hero, the Thorvaldsen Museum was erected to house his works next to Christiansborg Palace. Thorvaldsen is buried within the courtyard of the museum, in his time, he was seen as the successor of master sculptor Antonio Canova. His strict adherence to classical norms has tended to estrange modern audiences, Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen in 1770, the son of Gottskálk Þorvaldsson, an Icelander who had settled in Denmark. Thorvaldsens mother was Karen Dagnes, a Jutlandic peasant girl and his birth certificate and baptismal records have never been found, and the only record is of his confirmation in 1787. Thorvaldsen had claimed descent from Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first European born in America, Thorvaldsens childhood in Copenhagen was humble. His father had a habit that slowed his career. Nothing is known of Thorvaldsens early schooling, and he may have been schooled entirely at home and he never became good at writing, and he never acquired much of the knowledge of fine culture that was expected from an artist. In 1781, by the help of friends, eleven-year-old Thorvaldsen was admitted to Copenhagens Royal Danish Academy of Art first as a draftsman. At night he would help his father in the wood carving, among his professors were Nicolai Abildgaard and Johannes Wiedewelt, who are both likely influences for his later neo-classicist style. At the Academy he was praised for his works and won all the prizes from the small Silver Medal to the large Gold Medal for a relief of St. Peter healing the crippled beggar in 1793. As a consequence, he was granted a Royal stipend, enabling him to complete his studies in Rome. Leaving Copenhagen on August 30 on the frigate Thetis, he landed in Palermo in January 1797 traveled to Naples where he studied for a month before making his entry to Rome on 8 March 1797. Since the date of his birth had never recorded, he celebrated this day as his Roman birthday for the rest of his life. In Rome he lived at Via Sistina in front of the Spanish Steps and had his workshop in the stables of the Palazzo Barberini and he was taken under the wing of Georg Zoëga a Danish archeologist and numismatist living in Rome
34.
Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten
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Friedrich Ferdinand Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten was a Prussian politician. Dohna-Schlobitten was born at Finckenstein to Friedrich Alexander Burggraf und Graf zu Dohna-Schlobitten and he studied cameralistics at the Universities of Frankfurt and Göttingen. In Hamburg, where he visited a commercial college, Dohna became a friend of Alexander von Humboldt, in 1790 he joined the Royal Prussian War and Domain Chamber in Berlin and was promoted to the Director of the regional chamber in Marienwerder in 1801. After the Prussian defeat at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 Dohna did not pay homage to Napoleon, Dohna was voluntarily detained as a hostage to secure his pledge. In April 1807 Dohna negotiated with Napoleon at the Palace of Finckenstein on a French-Prussian separate peace, on 4 August 1807 Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia appointed Dohna to the President of the Royal War and Domain Chamber. On proposal of Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom Stein Dohna became his successor as Prussian minister of Interior after Stein was forced to leave his office on French pressure in 1808, as such Dohna supported the foundation of the University of Berlin by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Dohna came into opposition to Karl August von Hardenberg and left office in November 1810 and he returned to his estates in East Prussia and organized a meeting of the Prussian estates in Königsberg with Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg on 5 February 1813 after the Convention of Tauroggen. Here Dohna was elected the Chairman of the Commission of Peoples Armament, after this position was abandoned in June 1814 Dohna retired again and returned to his estate of Schlobitten. He was still active in politics and was a deputy of the district of Mohrungen in the first East Prussian Parliament in 1824. He also protested against the Karlsbad Decrees in 1820
35.
McKinsey & Company
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McKinsey & Company is a worldwide management consulting firm. It conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis in order to evaluate management decisions across the public, widely considered the most prestigious management consultancy, McKinseys clientele includes 80% of the worlds largest corporations, and an extensive list of governments and non-profit organizations. More current and former Fortune 500 C. E. O. s are alumni of McKinsey than of any other company, James P. Gorman, and many more. McKinsey publishes the McKinsey Quarterly, funds the McKinsey Global Institute research organization, publishes reports on management topics and its practices of confidentiality, influence on business practices, and corporate culture have experienced a polarizing reception. McKinsey was founded in 1926 by James O. McKinsey in order to apply accounting principles to management, McKinsey died in 1937, and the firm was restructured several times, with the modern-day McKinsey & Company emerging in 1939. Marvin Bower is credited with establishing McKinseys culture and practices in the 1930s based on the principles he experienced as a lawyer, the firm developed an up or out policy, where consultants who are not promoted are asked to leave. McKinsey was the first management consultancy to hire recent college graduates, in the 1980s and 1990s, the firm expanded internationally and established new practice areas. It had 88 staff in 1951 and 7,700 by the early 2000s, McKinseys consulting has helped to establish many of the norms in business and contributed to many of the major successes and failures in business in the modern era. McKinsey & Company was founded under the name James O. McKinsey & Company in 1926 by James McKinsey and he conceived the idea after witnessing inefficiencies in military suppliers while working for the U. S. Army Ordnance Department. The firm called itself an accounting and management firm and started out giving consulting on using accounting principles as a management tool, Mr. McKinseys first partners were Tom Kearney, hired in 1929, and Marvin Bower, hired in 1933. In its first few years, the firm grew quickly and began developing rapport among corporations, in 1935, Mr. McKinsey left the firm temporarily to serve as the Chairman and CEO of client Marshall Fields as it implemented the restructuring plan created by his firm. A Wellington project that accounted for 55 percent of McKinsey, Wellington & Companys billings was about to expire and Kearney, Bower wanted to expand nationally and hire young business school graduates, whereas Kearney wanted to stay in Chicago and hire experienced accountants. Additionally, in 1937 James O. McKinsey died after catching pneumonia and this led to the division of McKinsey, Wellington & Company in 1939. The accounting practice returned to Scovell, Wellington & Company, while the management engineering practice was split into McKinsey & Company, the New York office purchased exclusive rights to the McKinsey name in 1946. McKinsey & Company grew quickly in the 1940s and 50s, especially in Europe and it had 88 staff in 1951 and more than 200 by the 1960s, including 37 in London by 1966. In the same year, McKinsey had six offices in major US cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and these foreign offices were primarily in Europe, such as in London, Paris, Amsterdam, as well as in Melbourne. By this time, one third of the companys revenues originated from its European offices, guy Crockett stepped down as managing director in 1950, and Marvin Bower was elected in his place. McKinseys profit-sharing, executive and planning committees were formed in 1951, the organizations client base expanded especially among governments, defense contractors, bluechip companies and military organizations in the post-World War II era
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Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
37.
Vienna
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Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austrias primary city, with a population of about 1.8 million, and its cultural, economic and it is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin, Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region, along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apart from being regarded as the City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the worlds first psycho-analyst – Sigmund Freud. The citys roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city and it is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first for the worlds most liveable cities, between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne, Australia. Monocles 2015 Quality of Life Survey ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world to make a base within, the UN-Habitat has classified Vienna as being the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013. Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is used as a case study by urban planners. Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the worlds number-one destination for international congresses and it attracts over 3.7 million tourists a year. The English name Vienna is borrowed from the homonymous Italian version of the name or the French Vienne. The etymology of the name is still subject to scholarly dispute. Some claim that the name comes from Vedunia, meaning forest stream, which produced the Old High German Uuenia. A variant of this Celtic name could be preserved in the Czech and Slovak names of the city, the name of the city in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Ottoman Turkish has a different, probably Slavonic origin, and originally referred to an Avar fort in the area. Slovene-speakers call the city Dunaj, which in other Central European Slavic languages means the Danube River, evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north
38.
Napoleonic Wars
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The wars resulted from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars, which had raged on for years before concluding with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. Napoleon became the First Consul of France in 1799, then Emperor five years later, inheriting the political and military struggles of the Revolution, he created a state with stable finances, a strong central bureaucracy, and a well-trained army. The British frequently financed the European coalitions intended to thwart French ambitions, by 1805, they had managed to convince the Austrians and the Russians to wage another war against France. At sea, the Royal Navy destroyed a combined Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in October 1805, Prussian worries about increasing French power led to the formation of the Fourth Coalition in 1806. France then forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July, although Tilsit signified the high watermark of the French Empire, it did not bring a lasting peace for Europe. Hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European mainland, Napoleon invaded Iberia, the Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support. The Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla warfare, the Continental System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client states, especially Russia. Unwilling to bear the consequences of reduced trade, the Russians routinely violated the Continental System. The French launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the collapse and retreat of the Grand Army along with the destruction of Russian lands. In 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France, a lengthy military campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. The Allies then invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814 and he was exiled to the island of Elba near Rome and the Bourbons were restored to power. However, Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again, the Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June. The Congress of Vienna, which started in 1814 and concluded in 1815, established the new borders of Europe and laid out the terms, Napoleon seized power in 1799, creating a de facto military dictatorship. The Napoleonic Wars began with the War of the Third Coalition, Kagan argues that Britain was irritated in particular by Napoleons assertion of control over Switzerland. Furthermore, Britons felt insulted when Napoleon stated that their country deserved no voice in European affairs, for its part, Russia decided that the intervention in Switzerland indicated that Napoleon was not looking toward a peaceful resolution of his differences with the other European powers. The British quickly enforced a blockade of France to starve it of resources. Napoleon responded with economic embargoes against Britain, and sought to eliminate Britains Continental allies to break the coalitions arrayed against him, the so-called Continental System formed a league of armed neutrality to disrupt the blockade and enforce free trade with France
39.
Prague
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Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. It is the 14th largest city in the European Union and it is also the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city has a temperate climate, with warm summers and chilly winters. Prague has been a political, cultural, and economic centre of central Europe with waxing and waning fortunes during its history and it was an important city to the Habsburg Monarchy and its Austro-Hungarian Empire. Prague is home to a number of cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence. Main attractions include the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, since 1992, the extensive historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The city has more than ten major museums, along with theatres, galleries, cinemas. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city, also, it is home to a wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. Prague is classified as an Alpha- global city according to GaWC studies, Prague ranked sixth in the Tripadvisor world list of best destinations in 2016. Its rich history makes it a popular tourist destination, and the city more than 6.4 million international visitors annually. Prague is the fifth most visited European city after London, Paris, Istanbul, the region was settled as early as the Paleolithic age. In the last century BC, the Celts were slowly driven away by Germanic tribes, around the area where present-day Prague stands, the 2nd century map of Ptolemaios mentioned a Germanic city called Casurgis. In the following century, the Czech tribes built several fortified settlements in the area, most notably in Levý Hradec, Butovice and in the Šárka valley. The construction of what came to be known as the Prague Castle began near the end of the 9th century, the first masonry under Prague Castle dates from the year 885 at the latest. The other prominent Prague fort, the Přemyslid fort Vyšehrad, was founded in the 10th century, Prague Castle is dominated by the cathedral, which was founded in 1344, but completed in the 20th century. The legendary origins of Prague attribute its foundation to the 8th century Czech duchess and prophetess Libuše and her husband, Přemysl, legend says that Libuše came out on a rocky cliff high above the Vltava and prophesied, I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars. She ordered a castle and a town called Praha to be built on the site, a 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the city was founded as Boihaem in c.1306 BC by an ancient king, Boyya. The region became the seat of the dukes, and later kings of Bohemia, under Roman Emperor Otto II the area became a bishopric in 973
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