Philosophical Literature

Confucius

2008-05-29T04:34:00.000-07:00

(Chinese philosopher, 551–479 B.C.) Confucius promoted the general observance of li (rites, norms of conduct established over time), while advocating a sensible attitude that recognised the importance of adapting tradition to context. Confucian ethics holds ren (goodness, humanity) to be the highest ideal.

Lao Tzu

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(Chinese philosopher, c. 6th century B.C.). Also known as Lao Tzu, Loazi is thought to be a contemporary of Confucius and credited with writing the Daodejing (also Tao Te Ching).

Mao Zedong

2008-05-29T03:22:00.001-07:00

(Chinese revolutionary, political leader and Marxist political theorist, 1893-1976). Mao Zedong was the main political leader of the Chinese Revolution, the first head of the People's Republic of China, and the principal theorist of "Mao Zedong Thought" or "Maoism", a contemporary development of revolutionary Marxist theory. Mao's writings deal with topics as broad as art and literature, organizational questions, and military strategy and tactics, in addition to philosophical matters. Mao drew heavily from Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel in writing his main work on dialectical materialism, On Contradiction, and its companion text on Marxist epistemology, On Practice. Mao also wrote a considerable amount on issues of political philosophy, elaborating on and developing Marx and Lenin's theories of class dictatorship and democracy in works such as On New Democracy and On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People. Mao's "official" Selected Works run into five heavy volumes. While he remains a controversial figure, Mao is having a considerable impact on contemporary philosophy, notably through his influence on Louis Althusser, Alain Badiou, and others, including Slavoj Žižek, who recently edited a collection of his philosophical writings under the title On Practice and Contradiction (Verso, 2007).

Mencius

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Mencius a.k.a. Meng-tzu, Meng K’o, (Chinese Confucian philosopher c. 379–272 B.C.). Most notable for his assertion of the innate goodness of human nature.

John Rogers Searle

2008-05-29T03:19:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher, 1932–). Searle is a prominent and often controversial contributor to philosophy of language and philosophy of mind; he is also noted for the account of social reality he gives in The Construction of Social Reality (1997). Searle's books are written in a clear, conversational style, a factor that contributes to his wide readership among lay-people. His early work was in speech act theory, where he elaborated and contributed new elements to John Austin's work in the field. Searle's philosophy of mind comprises three major components: a critique of computationalism and strong AI (the "Chinese Room Argument"), a theory of intentionality, and a theory of consciousness. Searle believes consciousness to be defined by first-person subjective experience, and thus irreducible to third-person objective description (based on neural states, for example); to attempt such a description is to immediately jettison the subject under consideration (consciousness). Searle also supposes consciousness to be an emergent property of brain processes and a function of brain biology. Searle's books include Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983), The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992), The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), Rationality in Action (2001), and Mind: A Brief Introduction (2004).

Xún Zǐ

2008-05-29T03:17:00.000-07:00

Xún Zǐ or Hsün Tzu (荀子; Chinese Confucian philosopher, c.310–237 B.C.). Xún Zǐ is best known for his opposition to Mencius’s view of the inherent goodness of human nature. For Xún Zǐ, rules of proper behaviour function to counter the corrupt desires and motivations of individuals.

Zhu Xi

2008-05-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

Zhu Xi or Chu Hsi (Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher, Song Dynasty, 1130–1200). Considered the greatest of the Neo-Confucian scholars, Zhu Xi’s thought initially represented a challenge to orthodox Neo-Confucianism. His commentaries on "The Four Books", however, would eventually form the basis for all civil service examinations conducted in China for the next 400 years, until that system was abolished in 1905.

Zhuangzi

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Zhuangzi (莊子) or Chuang Tzu (Chinese Taoist philosopher, c. 4th century B.C., Waring States Period). Author of the seven "inner chapters" of the text Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi’s teaching that there is no neutral ground from which to adjudicate judgements between opposing positions makes his philosophy something of a precursor to relativism.

Edith Stein

2008-05-29T03:06:00.000-07:00

(German philosopher, Carmelite nun, martyr, and saint of the Catholic Church, 1891–1942). Stein studied under two of the great minds of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler. In 1922 she converted to Christianity, eventually becoming a Carmelite nun. This failed to shield her from Nazi persecution, however, and she died in Auschwitz in 1942. She was canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by Pope John Paul II (who, interestingly, wrote his doctoral thesis on the phenomenological work of Max Scheler). Perhaps her major philosophical work is Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt to an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, which attempts a synthesis of phenomenology and the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Martin Luther

2008-05-29T03:04:00.000-07:00

(German theologian and leader of the Protestant reformation, 1483–1546). Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar from Saxony, schooled in philosophy and biblical languages. The texts that express Luther's dissatisfaction with Catholic doctrine are the 95 Theses, Appeal to the Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of a Christian Man, all of which prompted his excommunication by the Pope. Luther proclaimed justification by faith alone and the priesthood of all believers, unmediated by the Church. His translation of the Bible into German helped to shape the German language and had an influence on the English authors of the King James Bible.

Jacques Maritain

2008-05-29T03:03:00.000-07:00

(French Catholic philosopher, 1882–1973). In a state of metaphysical despair over the spiritual vacuum at the heart of French intellectual life, dominated as it was at the time by scientism, the young Maritain entered a suicide pact with his fiancée. It was Henri Bergson's vitalistic philosophy and critique of positivism that injected sufficient meaning into the lives of the couple for them to abandon their contract before it matured. Maritain went on to become one of the central figures of Neo-Thomism. His innovative interpretation of Aquinas's philosophy formed a central plank in the defence of Catholic doctrine against modernist attackers. Maritain also wrote on aesthetics (e.g. Art and Scholasticism, 1920), epistemology, metaphysics and theology (Distinguish to Unite: or, The Degrees of Knowledge, 1932), and political philosophy (Man and the State, 1961). He was also instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Karl Rahner

2008-05-29T02:50:00.000-07:00

(German theologian, 1904–1984). Rahner's theology influenced the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) and is now central for modern Catholicism. He is the author of Foundations of Christian Faith.

Max Scheler

2008-05-29T02:49:00.000-07:00

(German phenomenologist, social philosopher, and sociologist of knowledge). Scheler was born in Munich, studied in Jena, and came into contact with phenomenology upon his return to Munich in 1907. He was acquainted with both Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, though he was not altogether uncritical of their work. Upon his conversion to Catholicism after World War I, he began phenomenological analyses of religious phenomena and feelings, and later turned his attention to anthropology and natural science. At the core of Scheler’s philosophy is his theory of the essential and objective, though non-Platonic, nature of values.

Julian of Norwich

2008-05-29T02:48:00.000-07:00

(English Christian theologian and mystic, c. 1342–c. 1416). Considered one of the greatest English mystics and adored by the Catholic and Reformed churches alike, Julian wrote in-depth theoretical accounts of sixteen visions she experienced toward the end of a severe, almost fatal illness. The Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393) is believed to be the first book written by a woman in the English language. Julian's theology is discordantly optimistic for her time; her language references metaphors of domesticity and motherhood in describing a God who is universally loving and compassionate rather than punitive.

Peter Thomas Geach

2008-05-29T02:47:00.001-07:00

(British philosopher, 1916–). Geach has made major contributions to philosophical logic, the theory of identity, philosophy of religion and history of philosophy. He is well known for his 1960 essay, "Ascriptivism", in which he refutes H. L. A. Hart's "ascriptivism" (the notion that to call an action voluntary is to express a commitment to hold the agent of the action responsible for it, rather than to describe the action as in some way caused by the agent), and for discrediting the notion of "distribution" in logic (Reference and Generality, 1968). Geach's Catholicism is central to his philosophy, and he is sometimes credited as the founder of Analytical Thomism.

Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio

2008-05-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

(San Bonaventura) (Italian theologian, 1221–1274). Medieval scholastic theologian and philosopher, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas, and a Cardinal Bishop of Albano. He was canonised by the Catholic Church and made a doctor of the church in 1588. Bonaventure wrote extensively on the connection between philosophy and theology, developing the view that "all divisions of knowledge are handmaids of theology." His major writings include a four-volume Commentary on the Sentences of Lombard, Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, De Reductione Artium ad Theologiam ("On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology"), and Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum ("The Mind's Journey Unto God").

G. E. M. Anscombe

2008-05-29T02:45:00.000-07:00

(English philosopher, 1919–2001). Anscombe studied under Ludwig Wittgenstein; she became his close friend and a leading authority on his work. She is the author of Intention and "An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus". In her essay "Modern Moral Philosophy", Anscombe coined the term "consequentialism" to distinguish modern English moral philosophy from earlier forms of utilitarianism. She was also a political activist and a devout Catholic.

Acharya Nāgārjuna

2008-05-28T14:12:00.002-07:00

(Indian Mahayana Buddhist philosopher, fl. second century A.D.). Founder of the Madhyamaka View. Author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way).

Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha

2008-05-28T14:12:00.001-07:00

(Spiritual teacher and historical founder of Buddhism, c. 563–483 B.C.). Siddhārtha Gautama taught that desire or craving, born of ignorance, is the cause of suffering. Desire and suffering may be overcome by following the Eightfold Path (rightness of speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration, thought, and intentions), and accepting the following claims: all existence is unsatisfactory; all existence is impermanent; and there is no permanent self.

Bodhidharma

2008-05-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Bodhidharma or Da Mo (Buddhist monk credited with introducing Zen Buddhism to China, fl. A.D. 526/527). Displeased with his lack of progress in Southern China, Bodhidharma is said to have spent the last nine years of his life seated and silent, his gaze fixed upon a wall inside a cave near the Shaolin Monastery.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

2008-05-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

(Austrian-born philosopher, 1889–1951). Wittgenstein was a central figure for the development of British analytic and ordinary language philosophy, though some elements of his thought situate him uneasily within that tradition. A distinction is commonly made (not least by Wittgenstein himself) between the austere, early Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, whose picture theory of meaning has it strictly as a function of propositional logic, and the later Wittgenstein of the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, who famously proposed "meaning is use". More recent scholarship has tended to emphasize the continuity of Wittgenstein's thought, particularly with reference to his view of the essentially "therapeutic" nature of philosophy, and the implied ethics held to be consistent across his philosophical work. Wittgenstein kept extensive philosophical notes that have led to several posthumously published works, such as the Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Grammar, Philosophical Remarks, and On Certainty.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

2008-05-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

(Russian writer and philosopher, 1828–1910). Acclaimed as perhaps the greatest of all novelists, Tolstoy was also a respectable moral philosopher. Alongside such novels as War and Peace and Anna Kerenina, Tolstoy wrote A Confession, What is Art?, and his non-fiction magnum opus, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, a work that endures as a blueprint for Christian anarchism and philosophies of "non-resistance", and which profoundly affected the young Mohandas Gandhi, inspiring him to take his first steps down the path of non-violent and successful resistance to colonial British rule in India.

Mary Wollstonecraft

2008-05-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

(British philosopher, writer and feminist, 1759–1797). Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women.

Bernard Arthur Owen Williams

2008-05-28T14:03:00.002-07:00

(British philosopher, 1929–2003). One of the most important moral philosophers of the twentieth century, Williams was a non-foundationalist and anti-reductionist thinker who believed that the complexity of moral experience made it impenetrable to systematic codification. He rejected utilitarianism out of hand, and criticized Kantian ethics and the categorical imperative for failing to make allowance for the specific identities and situations of individuals confronting moral choices. His books include Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy, Moral Luck, Problems of the Self, and Shame and Necessity.

Gilbert Ryle

2008-05-28T14:03:00.001-07:00

(English philosopher, 1900–1976). Ryle was a noted representative of the British school of ordinary language philosophy inspired by Wittgenstein. He is best known for The Concept of Mind, an influential work in which Ryle mounts a critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "the ghost in the machine". Ryle denied the existence of internal mental states and believed that subjectivity and individuality could be richly inferred and described from the evidence of a person's behaviour, without recourse to any super-sensory realm of consciousness or the soul.

Bertrand Russell

2008-05-28T14:02:00.001-07:00

(1872–1970). The quintessential British philosopher, Russel was a master of logic, a social reformer and a man of letters. He was the founder of a philosophical system for which he coined the term logical atomism, and an early advocate of logicism (the idea that all of mathematics can be derived from pure logic).

George Edward Moore

2008-05-28T14:01:00.001-07:00

(English philosopher, 1873–1985). Alongside Russell, Wittgenstein and Frege, G. E. Moore is a seminal figure for the Analytic tradition in philosophy. Moore broke with the idealism dominant among British philosophers during the early part of the twentieth century, and he is well known for his defence of common sense in philosophical analysis. His "Here is a hand" argument against philosophical scepticism, in which he held up one hand, and then another, and then concluded that there were at least two external objects of which he had knowledge and that therefore an external world exists, is understandably famous, and for some philosophers, infamous. Moore is also known for "Moore's paradox"; the paradox concerns the supposed impossibility of a person consistently holding to statements such as "It will rain but I don't believe it will", which are nevertheless not logically inconsistent and commonly asserted. Both the paradox and the "Here is a hand" argument were serious preoccupations for Wittgenstein, who thought the paradox to be Moore's greatest contribution to philosophical discourse. Moore is the author of Principia Ethica, "A Defence of Common Sense", "The Refutation of Idealism" and "A Proof of the External World".

John Stuart Mill

2008-05-28T14:00:00.001-07:00

(British empiricist, 1806–1873). Utilitarian social reformer and early advocate of equal rights for women.

David Hume

2008-05-28T13:58:00.001-07:00

(Scottish neo-skeptical philosopher and historian, 1711–1776). Hume's complex and influential body of work situates him as one of the most important philosophers of the modern age, and a pivotal figure of the Enlightenment. Hume refuted the Seventeenth Century School of rationalistic metaphysics, whose thinkers included Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza, rejecting their Euclidian deductive method of reasoning. Instead, he followed in the footsteps of the British Empiricist School, whose pronounced scepticism he greatly admired, to produce an innovative philosophy.

Peter Thomas Geach

2008-05-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

Mahatma Gandhi

2008-05-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

(Indian political and spiritual leader and activist, 1869–1948). The successful application of Gandhi’s theory of Satyagraha (strictly non-violent resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience) led India to independence from British colonial rule. Major influences on Gandhi’s thought included the Bhagavad Gita, The Sermon on the Mount, Tolstoy, Ruskin, Emerson and Thoreau.

Philippa Ruth Foot

2008-05-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

(British moral philosopher, 1920–) is one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics and a consistent critic of utilitarian and other forms of consequentialist ethics. Foot has been crucial for the reemergence of normative ethics within analytic philosophy, and discussion of her so-called "trolley problem" (i.e., a trolley hurtles along a track threatening to kill five people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher; the only way to save them is by pulling a lever that will divert the trolley onto a different track to which only one person has been tied--should you pull the lever saving five but killing one?) is ongoing. Foot's major publications include Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (1978), Natural Goodness (2001), and Moral Dilemmas: And Other Topics in Moral Philosophy (2002).

Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett

2008-05-28T13:53:00.001-07:00

Leading British analytic philosopher, 1925–); contends that arguments between realists and non-realists reduce to differing notions of truth.

Clinton Richard Dawkins

2008-05-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

(British evolutionary biologist and ethologist, popular writer on science and religion, 1941–). Apart from his major contributions to the field of evolutionary biology (The Selfish Gene (1976); The Extended Phenotype (1982)), Dawkins is also widely known for his forthright anti-religious views, the expression of which culminated in 2006 with the publication of The God Delusion.

Robin George (R.G.) Collingwood

2008-05-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

Collingwood (British philosopher and Archeaologist, 1889-1943). Professor of Metaphysics at Pembroke College, Oxford University. Collingwood wrote widely on many areas of philosophy and is best known for his books The Idea of History (posthumous) and The Principles of Art (1938). The central theme of Collingwood's philosophy of history is the view that the history practiced by historians is primarily a study of the minds of the historical agents under investigation. Historians cannot understand their subjects from an external objective perspective, but must strive to think the thoughts of those they study. Collingwood was also influential in aesthetics where he developed Croce's view that artworks are fundamentally expressions of emotion. He argued that although art was expressive by nature it could serve epistemological, metaphysical and social functions. Other major writings include: Speculum Mentis, Metaphysics, and Philosophical Method. (Anonymous contributor)

Francis Herbert Bradley

2008-05-28T13:49:00.001-07:00

(English philosopher, 1846–1924). Bradley was acclaimed as the greatest British idealist since Berkeley. Not long after his death, however, his idealism became the primary target for those leading the analytic revolution in Anglo philosophy, most notably the philosophers G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer. Bradley's major titles include Ethical Studies, The Principles of Logic and Appearance and Reality.

Sir Isaiah Berlin

2008-05-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

(Latvian-born British philosopher, historian of ideas, and political theorist, 1909–1997). Author of the influential essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty".

Jeremy Bentham

2008-05-28T13:47:00.000-07:00

(British philosopher and utilitarian legal reformer, 1748–1832). Bentham advocated a hedonistic utilitarian calculus in which an action is correct if it augments the pleasure of those affected. Pleasure, he said, is the only good and pain the only evil. He is the author of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and the inventor of the panopticon (never built), a circular prison in the middle of which stands a circular surveillance tower that affords a view into each of the prison cells; the guards in the tower remain invisible to the prisoners, who never know whether they are being observed or not.

Alfred Jules Ayer

2008-05-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

(British philosopher and one of the foremost proponents of logical positivism, 1910–1989); author of Language, Truth and Logic.

John Langshaw Austin

2008-05-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

usually J. L. Austin (British philosopher, 1911–1960). Austin is best known as an influential linguistic philosopher whose work of the 1950s paved the way for speech act theory. He is the author of How to Do Things With Words and the posthumously published Sense and Sensibilia, a volume compiled from lecture notes that represents a pointed attack on sense-data theories of perception; in particular, A. J. Ayer comes under heavy fire for his failure to consider how such words as "know", "exist" and "real" are employed in daily life.

Ayn Rand

2008-05-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

(Russian-born American philosopher and novelist, 1905–1982). Author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged; founder of Objectivism.

Susan Sontag

2008-05-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

(born Jan. 16, 1933, New York, N.Y., U.S. — died Dec. 28, 2004, New York) U.S. writer. She studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard University and taught philosophy at several institutions. In the early 1960s she began contributing to such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, Commentary, and Partisan Review, her French-influenced essays being characterized by a serious philosophical approach to aspects of modern culture rarely taken seriously at the time, including films, popular music, and "camp" sensibility. Collections of her essays include the influential Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (1966) and Styles of Radical Will (1969). Her later critical works include On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989). She also wrote screenplays and novels, including The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000).

Cornel Ronald West

2008-05-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher and public intellectual, 1953–). A provocative and charismatic public speaker, West cites the African American Baptist Church, Marxism, pragmatism, transcendentalism, and Anton Chekhov as influences. He self-identifies as a democratic socialist rather than a Marxist, mainly due to Marx's anti-religious views. Underpinning much of West's thought is the belief that white supremacy continues to define everyday life in America, and that this creates many "degraded and oppressed people hungry for identity, meaning, and self-worth." He has authored and co-authored many books, including Black Theology and Marxist Thought (1979), Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (1982), The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989), The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (1991), Race Matters (1993), and Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (2004).

Thorstein Bunde Veblen

2008-05-26T23:16:00.002-07:00

(Norwegian-American sociologist and economist, 1857–1929). Veblen was the founder, along with John R. Commons, of the Institutional economics movement. He is most famous for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), a satirical critique of the American economy in which the now conspicuous concepts of "conspicuous consumption", "conspicuous leisure" and "conspicuous waste" were introduced. Unlike the neoclassical economics that was emerging at the same time, Veblen described economic behavior as socially rather than individually determined and saw economic organization as a process of ongoing evolution.

Paul Johannes Tillich

2008-05-26T23:16:00.001-07:00

(German-born American theologian and philosopher, 1886–1965). Tillich was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, particularly after World War II. A popular speaker and preacher, Tillich is best known for his "method of correlation", a systematic theology that sought fresh Christian answers to the deep existential questions of the age. He is the author of The Protestant Era, Systematic Theology (three volumes), The Courage to Be, and Dynamics of Faith.

Henry David Thoreau

2008-05-26T23:15:00.001-07:00

(American naturalist and writer, author of "Resistance to Civil Government", 1817–1862).

Alfred Tarski

2008-05-26T23:14:00.001-07:00

(Polish-born American logician, mathematician, and philosopher of logic, 1902–1983). Author of Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Tarski is famous for his investigations, conducted in the 1930s while still in Poland, into the notions of truth and consequence, the results of which profoundly influenced later analytic philosophy.

Leo Strauss

2008-05-26T23:13:00.001-07:00

(German-born Jewish-American political philosopher; 1899–1973). Strauss asserted that political philosophy began with the execution of Socrates by the State.

Wilfrid Stalker Sellars

2008-05-26T23:12:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, 1912–1989). One of the great systematic philosophers of his generation; author of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (in which he concludes that classical empiricism is a myth) and Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.

John Rogers Searle

2008-05-26T23:11:00.001-07:00

George Santayana

2008-05-26T23:10:00.002-07:00

(Spanish-American philosopher, 1863–1952). A celebrated figure, Santayana's first major philosophical work, The Sense of Beauty (1896), puts the view that beauty is objectified pleasure, and is considered perhaps the first book of aesthetics written in the United States. His most famous quote comes from Reason in Common Sense (1905), the first volume of his The Life of Reason: "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." Santayana's major late works are Skepticism and Animal Faith (1923), and the mature articulation of his ontology, The Realms of Being (4 Vols., 1927–40), which presents an unusual and sophisticated synthesis of materialism and Platonism.

Edward Wadie Saïd

2008-05-26T23:10:00.001-07:00

(Palestinian-American literary theorist, 1935–2003). A founding figure of post-colonial theory, Saïd is best known for his work on Orientalism, the idea that even the most outwardly objective Western texts are underwritten by a series of false assumptions about the East that serve to reinforce a Western imperialist agenda.

John Rawls

2008-05-26T23:08:00.002-07:00

(American philosopher, 1921–2002); author of A Theory of Justice and The Law of Peoples. Rawls was an influential contributor to liberal political philosophy and his work is now engaged by a diverse range of thinkers across disciplinary boundaries, from legal theory and economics to sociology and theology.

Richard McKay Rorty

2008-05-26T23:08:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, 1931–2007). Rorty was one of the most important and influential philosophers writing in English during the second half of the twentieth century. He is the author of the seminal work, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, in which he rejects foundationalist accounts of knowledge.

W.V.O. Quine

2008-05-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

(Influential American analytic philosopher, 1908–2000). Author of Two Dogmas of Empiricism, in which he refutes the long-standing distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions.

Hilary Whitehall Putnam

2008-05-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

(American analytic philosopher, 1926– ). An influential thinker with original contributions to many fields including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and semantics. He is best known for his hypothesis of "multiple realizability", a notion developed in the 1960s to counter the view that mental states correspond with physical states of the brain, otherwise known as the "type-identity theory". Putnam argued that it is both conceivable and probable that different organisms realize the same mental state—being in pain, for example—through radically different orientations of the central nervous system.

Alvin Carl Plantinga

2008-05-26T23:05:00.002-07:00

(American philosopher, 1932–). Plantinga is noted for his "free will defence" to the problem of evil, his "evolutionary argument against naturalism", and the Christian religious epistemology Plantinga calls "reformed epistemology". The latter is outlined in the three-volume Warrant series; Plantinga there argues that belief in God may be rational and justified even in the absence of evidence and arguments for the existence of God.

Charles Sanders Peirce

2008-05-26T23:05:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, scientist and mathematician, 1839–1914). The founder of pragmatism, Peirce later thought it necessary to distance himself from the "remodelling" of his ideas by William James, who had, he thought, unduly psychologised a theory primarily intended to be of logical consequence. He thus re-branded himself a pragmaticist.

Thomas Paine

2008-05-26T23:04:00.001-07:00

(English-born political philosopher, 1737–1809). Paine was a revolutionary defender of democracy and human rights, and champion of popular radicalism. He pamphleteered for the cause of American independence and became its best known polemicist. In the major work of this period, Common Sense, Paine asserts that commoners are the equals of the landed aristocracy. Later in France he wrote a defence of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, which argues the case that sovereignty resides in human beings and is not bestowed by membership to a class or nation. Paine returned to the United States in 1802, and died in New York City on June 8, 1809.

Camille Anna Paglia

2008-05-26T22:39:00.002-07:00

(American literary theorist and cultural critic, 1947–). Paglia is a controversial feminist defender of pornography, prostitution, sexual perversion, and the Dionysian underside of human nature; a champion of classisism, art and poetry; and a strong critic of "liberal establishment" feminism. Her major published works include the best-seller Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990); Sex, Art, and American Culture; Vamps & Tramps: New Essays; The Birds, a study of Alfred Hitchcock; and Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems (2005).

Martha Nussbaum

2008-05-26T22:39:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, 1947–). Nussbaum’s areas of interest include ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, and political philosophy and ethics. She is associated with promoting a "capabilities approach" to development and ethics. With Amartya Sen she views capabilities as "substantial freedoms", such as the ability to live to old age, engage in economic transactions, or participate in political activities, as the constitutive parts of development. On this view, poverty is capability-deprivation, which contrasts with traditional utilitarian views that see development purely in terms of economic growth, and poverty purely as income-deprivation. She is the co-author, with Sen, of The Quality of Life, and author of Frontiers of Justice, which builds on and addresses certain deficiencies within John Rawls’ political philosophy.

Robert Nozick

2008-05-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

(American political philosopher, 1938–2002). Nozick was a mercurial thinker who often consulted fields external to philosophy, bringing their ideas to bear in the presentation of novel approaches to a variety of philosophical problems. He is best remembered for the libertarian political philosophy he articulated in Anarchy, State, and Utopia which attempted to counter the arguments of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Nozick’s later text, The Examined Life, however, backs away slightly from the hardcore libertarian views expressed in the former work.

Thomas Nagel

2008-05-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher, 1936–). A regular contributor to ethics and liberal political philosophy, Nagel is the author of The Possibility of Altruism. He is also an influential philosopher of mind who champions an anti-physicalist view, asserting that consciousness is not reducible to physical states of the brain.

Herbert Marcuse

2008-05-26T22:36:00.002-07:00

(German-American philosopher and sociologist, 1898–1979). Hegelian Marxist and member of the Frankfurt school.

Clarence Irving (C.I.) Lewis

2008-05-26T22:36:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, 1883–1964). The founder of "conceptualist pragmatism", C.I. Lewis was the most influential American philosopher active in the 1930s and 1940s. Lewis was instrumental in the rise of analytic philosophy in the United States and many of his graduate students at Harvard went on to become the leading figures in the field. He made major contributions to logic and epistemology, and to a lesser extent, ethics. He is the author of Mind and World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge, Symbolic Logic, and An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation.

David Kellogg Lewis

2008-05-26T22:35:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher with strong links to the Australian philosophical community, 1941–2001). Lewis is best known for his extreme modal realism which posits the literal existence, in parallel with our actual world, of an infinite number of concrete possible worlds.

George P. Lakoff

2008-05-26T22:34:00.001-07:00

(American cognitive linguist, 1941–). Professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. Lakoff is best known for his theory of the centrality of metaphor to human thinking, political behavior and society, and for his elucidation of the concept of "embodied mind," particularly in relation to mathematics. Author of Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (with Mark Johnson), Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being (with Rafael Núñez), and Whose Freedom?: the battle over America's most important idea.

Saul Kripke

2008-05-26T22:33:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher and logician, 1940–); author of Naming and Necessity and "Outline of a Theory of Truth".

Thomas Samuel Kuhn

2008-05-26T22:32:00.000-07:00

(American historian and philosopher of science, 1922–1996). Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most influential works in contemporary philosophy of science, rejects the conventional view of science as a steady, linear progression of knowledge. Instead, Kuhn proposes that scientific history comprises long periods of relative peace ("normal science") punctuated by violent intellectual revolutions brought about by "paradigm shifts". Kuhn notes the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics as a particularly clear example of this.

Jacques Lacan

2008-05-26T22:31:00.000-07:00

(French psychoanalyst and theorist, 1901–1981). Perhaps the most difficult of French writers, Lacan’s "return to Freud" placed psychoanalysis squarely at the centre of French thought during the second half of the twentieth century. One of the major goals of his seminars (delivered in Paris over many years and attended by all of the major figures of the French intelligentsia at one time or another), was to re-radicalise Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, the true nature of which had, according to Lacan, been misread and swept aside by the dominant, American Ego Psychology school of psychoanalysis.

Jaegwon Kim

2008-05-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

(Korean-born American philosopher, 1934–). Kim is best known for his work on mental causation and the mind-body problem. Key themes in his work include: a rejection of Cartesian metaphysics, the limitations of strict psychophysical identity, supervenience, and the individuation of events. Kim's work on these and other contemporary metaphysical and epistemological issues is well-represented by the papers collected in Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (1993). (Wikipedia)

Fredric Jameson

2008-05-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

(American literary theorist and Marxist political thinker, 1934–). A writer of significant rhetorical flare and depth, Jameson is best known for his analysis of postmodern culture in relation to organized capitalism. His major works include Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Political Unconscious, The Prison-House of Language and Marxism and Form.

William James

2008-05-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher and psychologist, 1842–1910). One of the founders of pragmatism, James viewed the self as the Promethean creator of its own world. However, this view is held in tension with another side of his philosophy, one that stresses the irreducible multiplicity of experience and denies the finality of all conclusions.

Roman Osipovich Jakobson

2008-05-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

(Роман Осипович Якобсон) (Russian-American linguist and literary theorist, 1896–1982). One of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century, Jakobson pioneered the development of structural linguistics and the structural analysis of language, poetry, and art. He was close to the Russian Formalists and Futurists during his youth, and in the 1930s came into contact with the work of Saussure, whose Langue/Parole distinction and theory of the sign laid the foundation for so much structuralist work. Jakobson's model of language that emphasizes its function along the great twin axes of metaphor and metonymy would virtually define structuralism for French thinkers during the twentieth century, directly informing the semiology of Roland Barthes and the structural reinterpretation of Freud's theories by Jacques Lacan. Jakobson published some 650 books and papers dealing with poetics, philology, linguistics, folklore and slavic studies.

Donna Haraway

2008-05-26T22:20:00.001-07:00

(American feminist philosopher, 1944–). Author of Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (1976), Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989), and Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991).

Jürgen Habermas

2008-05-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

Jürgen Habermas (German philosopher and leading contemporary critical theorist, 1929–). With an interdisciplinary reach that transcends even that of his teachers at the Frankfurt School, Habermas draws upon a range of methodologies in developing his concept of the social sphere and his theory of communicative action, including sociology in the tradition of Weber, Durkheim, and Mead; German Idealist philosophy; Neo-Kantianism; Marxism; American pragmatism; Anglo-American linguistic philosophy and speech act theory; and developmental psychology. His principle achievement is to have salvaged the concept of enlightenment rationality by positing interpersonal structures of linguistic communication as the loci of reason ("communicative reason"), rather than God, the cosmos or the knowing subject. Habermas's magnum opus is The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) in two volumes. Other writings include The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985), and Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (1992).

Henry Nelson Goodman

2008-05-18T11:28:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, 1906–1998). Author of Ways of Worldmaking and The Languages of Art. A central figure for aesthetic philosophy in particular, Goodman’s Languages of Art: An Approach to a General Theory of Symbols stands with Ernst Gombrich’s Art and Illusion as one of the most important contributions to analytic aesthetics made during the twentieth century.

Erich Fromm

2008-05-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

(German-American-Jewish social psychologist and theorist, 1900–1980). Fromm was influential in making psychoanalysis an important reference for the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. His major works include Escape from Freedom (in Britain, Fear of Freedom), Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics, and the best-seller, The Art of Loving.

Jerry Alan Fodor

2008-05-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher and cognitive scientist, 1935—). An influential thinker in the fields of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language; author of The Language of Thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

2008-05-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

(American essayist and poet, 1803–1882). Considered to be one of the greatest orators of the nineteenth century.

Jonathan Edwards

2008-05-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher, theologian and Calvinist preacher, 1703–1758). Author of Freedom of the Will and Original Sin.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

2008-05-18T11:22:00.001-07:00

(African American sociologist, criminologist and scholar, 1868–1963). Du Bois was the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist for African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century; he is the author of over 4,000 books and essays including The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction, Black Folk, Then and Now, and The Negro.

John Dewey

2008-05-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

(American philosopher, social critic and education theorist, 1859–1952). For Dewey, the felt immediacy of experience is the fundamental background against which, through inquiry, more sophisticated cognitive modes of experience are "consummated".

Daniel Dennett

2008-05-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher, 1942–). A Prominent contributor to philosophy of mind who approaches the field from the perspectives of evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

Donald Herbert Davidson

2008-05-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

(American analytic philosopher, 1917–2003). Author of Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation and Truth, Language, and History: Philosophical Essays. Davidson was one of the most important analytic philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. He made novel and seminal contributions to the philosophy of language; central here is his rejection of the idea that linguistic understanding is in any way a function of language understood as a set of rules and conventions.

Arthur Coleman Danto

2008-05-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

(American philosopher and art critic, 1924–). Danto is one of the most influential contemporary contributors to philosophical aesthetics. His works include After the End of Art, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art.

Patricia Smith Churchland

2008-05-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

(Canadian-American philosopher, 1943–). Author of Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain; along with her husband, Paul, the Churchlands are often associated with eliminative materialism, a school of thought that identifies the mind with the brain and suggests that neuroscience will eventually lead us to abandon such everyday concepts as free will and belief.

Avram Noam Chomsky

2008-05-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

(American linguist, philosopher and political radical, 1928–). Chomsky is perhaps the most often cited of contemporary thinkers. His early critique of behaviourism and his concept of generative grammar revolutionized the field of linguistics and have had important implications for psychology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.

Rudolf Carnap

2008-05-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

(German-born American philosopher and logician, 1891–1970); Carnap was a central figure in the Vienna Circle of logical positivist philosophers and made important contributions to semantics, probability and inductive logic, and the philosophy of science.

Murray Bookchin

2008-05-18T11:13:00.001-07:00

(American sociologist and political philosopher, 1921–2006). A radical anti-capitalist thinker who profoundly influenced newly emerging ecology and Green movements during the 60s, 70s and 80s, both in America and internationally. Bookchin is noted for his synthesis of libertarian socialism and modern ecological awareness. His works include "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought", The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, and The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism.

Homi K. Bhabha

2008-05-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

(Indian-American postcolonial theorist, 1949–). Together with Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, Bhabha is a foremost proponent of post-colonial theory. His considerable reputation primarily stems from just two influential books: the edited volume Nation and Narration (1990), and the collection of essays The Location of Culture (1994 & 2004). Bhabha acknowledges Edward Said as a major influence, while also critically referencing Derrida, Foucault, Fanon and the psychoanalytic theory of Lacan in his work, which explores the way the textual discourse of colonialism produces and reproduces its own "other". Bhabha's later work positions him as one of the principal theorists of "hybridity", the term used to describe the emergence of new migrant and minority discourses in the multicultural spaces of the modern and postmodern eras.

Hannah Arendt

2008-05-18T11:10:00.001-07:00

(German-American political philosopher, 1906–1975). Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she interprets Fascism and communism as variants of the broader historical phenomenon of totalitarianism, is perhaps her most important contribution to political philosophy. Her Report on the Banality of Evil, which covered the trial of Adolph Eichmann, is often misunderstood as a description of the banality of the holocaust itself; the phrase is instead intended to express the chillingly ordinary, bureaucratic mentality of the Nazi officials who oversaw the genocide, such as Eichmann.

Kwame Anthony Appiah

2008-05-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

(Ghanaian-American philosopher, 1954–). A thinker whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, African intellectual history, and Cosmopolitanist philosophies. Appiah is the author of Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers and the very readable introduction to philosophy, Necessary Questions. (Photo by David Shankbone/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa

2008-05-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

(Mexican-American lesbian feminist scholar and activist, 1942–2004). In her theoretical works, Anzaldúa calls for a "new mestiza," a term she introduced to American postcolonial feminist discourse that refers to an individual's awareness of her own hybrid identities, producing "new angles of vision" that may be used to challenge binary thinking in the Western world. She is the author of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.

Peter Frederick Strawson

2008-05-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

(English philosopher, 1919–2006). Strawson was instrumental in bringing metaphysics within the scope of analytic philosophy. His works include Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics and The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Emma Goldman

2008-05-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

(Lithuanian-born anarchist political philosopher and feminist, 1869–1940). Known as "Red Emma", Goldman was a controversial figure who was imprisoned three times in the United States before eventually being deported. She was perhaps the first person to synthesize gender politics and anarchist theory, and her speeches and writings comprised a major contribution to anarchist philosophy in Europe and America during the first half of the twentieth century.