30 résultats pour "philosophy"

• Philosophy of Anthropology

  Anthropology, philosophy of Anthropology, like philosophy, is multifaceted. It studies humans' physical, social, cultural and linguistic development, as well as their material culture, from prehistoric times up to the present, in all parts of the world. Some anthropological sub-fields have strong ties with the physical and biological sciences; others identify more closely with the social sciences or humanities. Within cultural and social anthropology differing theoretical approaches disagree abo...

• Byzantine philosophy

  Byzantine philosophy In Byzantium from the ninth century through to the fifteenth century, philosophy as a discipline remained the science of fundamental truths concerning human beings and the world. Philosophy, the 'wisdom from without', was invariably contrasted with the 'philosophy from within', namely theology. The view that philosophy is 'the handmaiden of theology', which the Greek Church Fathers derived from Philo and the Alexandrian school of theology, was not the dominant position in By...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Doubt and the Cogito - DESCARTES

  Descartes insisted that the first task in philosophy is to rid oneself of all prejudice by calling in doubt all that can be doubted. The second task of the philosopher, having raised these doubts, is to prevent them leading to scepticism. This strategy comes out clearly in Descartes' Meditations. As the title suggests, the work is not intended to be read as an academic treatise. It is meant to be followed in the frame of mind of a religious retreat, such as St Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exe...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Sidgwick

  Sidgwick Unlike John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, Henry Sidgwick's is hardly a household name in intellectual circles beyond the world of professional philosophy. His standing amongst many contemporary moral philosophers as possibly the greatest nineteenthcentury writer on ethics would come as a shock to such householders, as would C.D. Broad's estimate of his book The Methods of Ethics as ‘one of the English philosophical classics' and ‘on the whole the best treatise on moral theory that has...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: THE SCHOOL OF PARMENIDES

  THE SCHOOL OF PARMENIDES The philosophical scene is very different when we turn to Parmenides, who was born in the closing years of the sixth century. Though probably a pupil of Xenophanes, Parmenides spent most of his life not in Ionia but in Italy, in a town called Elea, seventy miles or so south of Naples. He is said to have drawn up an excellent set of laws for his city; but we know nothing of his politics or political philosophy. He is the first philosopher whose writing has come down to us...

• Brentano, Franz Clemens

  Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838-1917) Brentano was a philosopher and psychologist who taught at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna. He made significant contributions to almost every branch of philosophy, notably psychology and philosophy of mind, ontology, ethics and the philosophy of language. He also published several books on the history of philosophy, especially Aristotle, and contended that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. He is best known for reintroducing the schol...

• al-Sabzawari, al-Hajj Mulla Hadi

  al-Sabzawari, al-Hajj Mulla Hadi (1797/8-1873) Al-Sabzawari was the most influential nineteenth-century Iranian philosopher. His reputation rests in part on his Sharh al-manzuma, a commentary on his own Ghurar alfara'id (The Blazes of the Gems), a didactic poem (manzuma) encapsulating in a systematic fashion an exposition of the existentialist philosophy of Mulla Sadra. He was also the most sought-after teacher of philosophy in his day, and many students travelled to Sabzavar to be taught by him...

• Aristotelianism, Renaissance

  Aristotelianism, Renaissance By the Renaissance here is meant the period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries during which there was a deliberate attempt, especially in Italy, to pattern cultural activities on models drawn from antiquity. However, Aristotelianism during that period was not cut off from medieval developments, since earlier interests and topics of discussion still held the attention of philosophers, theologians and non-academic intellectuals. Moreover, given that Aristoteliani...

• Asmus, Valentin Ferdinandovich

  Asmus, Valentin Ferdinandovich (1894-1975) One of the most accomplished thinkers in the Soviet Marxist tradition, Asmus wrote extensively in many areas of philosophy, and was widely regarded as the Soviet Union's principal Kant scholar. Early in his career, he became associated with the influential school of 'dialecticians' led by A.M. Deborin and produced a number of significant writings in the history of philosophy. When Deborin and his followers were condemned as 'Menshevizing idealists' in 1...

• al-Suhrawardi, Shihab al-Din Yahya

  al-Suhrawardi, Shihab al-Din Yahya (1154-91) Al-Suhrawardi, whose life spanned a period of less than forty years in the middle of the twelfth century AD, produced a series of highly assured works which established him as the founder of a new school of philosophy in the Muslim world, the school of Illuminationist philosophy (hikmat alishraq). Although arising out of the peripatetic philosophy developed by Ibn Sina, al-Suhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy is critical of several of the positions...

• Alighieri, Dante

  Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321) 'radical Aristotelians', such as Boethius of Dacia and Aubry of Reims (see Averroism). These Parisian masters claimed that philosophy is autonomous and should not be subordinated to any other discipline, in particular not to theology, because it provides humans with all the knowledge required for obtaining happiness. Since humans are essentially rational animals, they fully realize their capacities if they dedicate themselves to the most rational activity, philosophy...

• Chisholm, Roderick Milton

  Chisholm, Roderick Milton (1916-) Chisholm is an important analytic philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. His work in epistemology, metaphysics and ethics is characterized by scrupulous attention to detail, the use of a few basic, undefined or primitive terms, and extraordinary clarity. One of the first Anglo-American philosophers to make fruitful use of Brentano and Meinong, Chisholm translated many of Brentano's philosophical writings. As one of the great teachers, Chisholm...

• Aquinas, Thomas

  Aquinas, Thomas (1224/6-74) Aquinas lived an active, demanding academic and ecclesiastical life that ended while he was still in his forties. He nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a few pages to a few volumes. Because his writings grew out of his activities as a teacher in the Dominican order and a member of the theology faculty of the University of Paris, most are concerned with what he and his contemporaries thought of as theology. However, much of academic theology in the...

• Antiochus

  Antiochus (c.130-68 BC) For most of his career the Greek philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon, a pupil of Philo of Larissa, was an orthodox ‘sceptical' Academic. He then changed his philosophy: some called him a Stoic, but he himself claimed to be returning to the Old Academy of Plato and his immediate successors. He took a generous view of his new home, urging that the Peripatetics and the Stoics were not new schools of thought but mere modifications of Platonism, and the philosophical position whi...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: `Abduh, Muhammad ?

  Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ‘Abduh, Muhammad (1849-1905) The Egyptian reformer and Muslim apologist Muhammad ‘Abduh was a pupil and friend of al-Afghani. Although deeply influenced by him, ‘Abduh was less inclined to political activism and concentrated on religious, legal and educational reform. His best-known writings are a theological treatise, Risalat al-tawhid (translated into English as The Theology of Unity), and an unfinished Qur'anic commentary, Tafsir al-manar (The Manar Commentary), on...

• al-Sijistani, Abu Sulayman Muhammad

  al-Sijistani, Abu Sulayman Muhammad (c.932-c.1000) Al-Sijistani was one of the great figures of Baghdad in the fourth century AH (tenth century AD). He assembled around him a circle of philosophers and litterateurs who met regularly in sessions to discuss topics related to philosophy, religion and language. As a philosopher with a humanistic orientation, his concerns went beyond subjects of strictly philosophical nature. His philosophical ideas displayed Aristotelian and Neoplatonic motifs. He c...

• Applied ethics

  Applied ethics Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It therefore includes medical ethics, environmental ethics, and evaluation of the social implications of scientific and technological change, as well as matters of policy in such areas as health care, business or journalism. It is also concerned with professional codes and responsibilities in such areas. Typical of the issues discussed are abortion, euthanasia, personal relatio...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Albert the Great

  Albert the Great (1200-80) Albert the Great was the first scholastic interpreter of Aristotle's work in its entirety, as well as being a theologian and preacher. He left an encyclopedic body of work covering all areas of medieval knowledge, both in philosophy (logic, ethics, metaphysics, sciences of nature, meteorology, mineralogy, psychology, anthropology, physiology, biology, natural sciences and zoology) and in theology (biblical commentaries, systematic theology, liturgy and sermons). His ph...

• al-Razi, Fakhr al-Din

  al-Razi, Fakhr al-Din (1149-1209) Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was one of the outstanding figures in Islamic theology. Living in the second half of the sixth century AH (twelfth century AD), he also wrote on history, grammar, rhetoric, literature, law, the natural sciences and philosophy, and composed one of the major works of Qur'anic exegesis, the only remarkable gap in his output being politics. He travelled widely in the eastern lands of Islam, often engaging in heated polemical confrontations....

• Chrysippus

  Chrysippus (c.280-c.206 BC ) The Greek philosopher Chrysippus of Soli was the third and greatest head of the Stoic school in Athens. He wrote voluminously, and in particular developed Stoic logic into a truly formidable system. His philosophy is effectively identical with 'early Stoicism'. Chrysippus was born at Soli in Cilicia (southern Turkey). He came to Athens to study philosophy, initially with the Academic sceptic Arcesilaus. By the time he transferred his allegiance to the Stoic school, i...

• THE MATERIAL WORLD - DESCARTES

  Descartes' Meditations brought him fame throughout Europe. He entered into correspondence and controversy with most of the learned men of his time, especially through the intermediary of a learned Franciscan, Marin Mersenne. Some of his friends began to teach his views in universities; and in the Principles of Philosophy he set out his metaphysics and his physics in the form of a textbook. Other professors, seeing their Aristotelian system threatened, subjected the new doctrines to violent attac...

• Berdiaev, Nikolai Aleksandrovich

  Berdiaev, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nikolai Berdiaev, Russian religious idealist, was one of many non-Marxist thinkers expelled from Russia by communist authorities in 1922. Although attracted to Marxism in his youth, even then he tempered it with a Neo-Kantian ethical theory. Well before the Bolshevik Revolution, he became seriously disenchanted with Marxist philosophy (though not with the idea of socialism) and embarked on the career of elaborating a personalistic Christian philosophy that occupi...

• Certeau, Michel de

  Certeau, Michel de (1925-86) Michel de Certeau, a French philosopher trained in history and ethnography, was a peripatetic teacher in Europe, South America and North America. His thought has inflected four areas of philosophy. He studied how mysticism informs late-medieval epistemology and social practice. With the advent of the Scientific Revolution, the affinities the mystic shares with nature and the cosmos become, like religion itself, repressed or concealed. An adjunct discipline, heterolog...

• Aristippus the Elder

  Aristippus the Elder (c.435-c.355 BC) Aristippus of Cyrene was a member of Socrates' entourage who after Socrates' death (399 BC) founded the Cyrenaic school. He was primarily interested in practical ethics. He focused on the concepts of pleasure and pain, and classed them as bodily motions of which we are conscious. He considered pleasure a major component of happiness, but also attributed intrinsic value to virtue and emphasized the importance of study and exercise as means to self-control. Ar...

• Cattaneo, Carlo

  Cattaneo, Carlo (1801-69) The figurehead of the Italian democratic movement prior to the unification of Italy, Carlo Cattaneo developed a theory of federalism as a practice of self-government, envisaging a United States of Italy. He identified the bourgeoisie as the most dynamic force in contemporary history and regarded scientific culture as the engine of progress. Often dubbed the first Italian positivist, he perceived empirical philosophy as a kind of synthesis of all the sciences, but also s...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: ABELARD AND HÉLoÏsE

  ABELARD AND HÉLoÏsE Peter Abelard was just thirty years old when Anselm died. Born into a knightly family in Brittany in 1079, he was educated at Tours and went to Paris in about 1100 to join the school attached to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, run by William of Champeaux. Falling out with his teacher, he went to Melun to found a school of his own, and later set up a rival school in Paris on Mont Ste Geneviève. From 1113 he was William's successor at Notre Dame. While teaching there he took lodgi...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Alexander of Aphrodisias

  Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200) The Peripatetic philosopher Alexander was known to posterity as the commentator on Aristotle, until Averroes took over this title. His commentaries eclipsed most of those of his predecessors, which now survive only in scattered quotations. Used by Plotinus, Alexander's commentaries were the basis for subsequent work on Aristotle by Neoplatonist commentators, and even though some themselves survive only in quotations by these later writers, Alexander's int...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Anselm of Canterbury

  Anselm of Canterbury The next major figure in the Western intellectual tradition and the dominant thinker of the late eleventh century is A nselm of C anterbury.74 M arenbon arrives at an ambivalent judgement in his case, on one hand denying him the title of ‘philosopher' because his argumentation does not arrive finally at its conclusions but assumes them from the outset, and on the other conceding it in recognition of his contributions to the study of the language—thought relation and of the...

• Encyclopedia of Philosophy: THE PHAEDo of Plato

  THE PHAEDo The dialogue with which Plato concludes his account of Socrates' last days is called the Phaedo, after the name of the narrator, a citizen of Parmenides' city of Elea, who claims, with his friends Simmias and Cebes, to have been present with Socrates at his death. The drama begins as news arrives that the sacred ship has returned from Delos, which brings to an end the stay of execution. Socrates' chains are removed, and he is allowed a final visit from his weeping wife Xanthippe with...

• Augustinianism

  Augustinianism The influence of Augustine on Western philosophy is exceeded in duration, extent and variety only by that of Plato and Aristotle. Augustine was an authority not just for the early Middle Ages, when he was often the lone authority, but well into modern times. He was in many ways the principal author in contention during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and in France alone he was variously received by authors as diverse as Montaigne, Descartes, Malebranche, Arnauld and Pasca...