Philosopher n A person devoted to studying and producing results in philosophy. The word ‘philosopher’ literally means ‘lover of wisdom’.
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Table of Contents
- 1 Albert Camus
- 2 Albert Einstein
- 3 Alexius von Meinong
- 4 Alfred Jules Ayer
- 5 Alfred North Whitehead
- 6 Antisthenes
- 7 Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
- 8 Archimedes
- 9 Aristotle
- 10 Arnold Geulincx
- 11 Arnold Toynbee
- 12 Arthur Schopenhauer
- 13 Auguste Comte
- 14 Ayn Rand
- 15 Baruch Spinoza
- 16 Benedetto Croce
- 17 Bertrand Russell
- 18 Blaise Pascal
- 19 Boethius
- 20 Carl Friedrich Gauss
- 21 Carl Gustav Hempel
- 22 Carl Gustav Jung
- 23 Charles Bonnet
- 24 Charles Darwin
- 25 Charles Sanders Peirce
- 26 Cicero
- 27 Comte de Buffon
- 28 Confucius
- 29 Dante Alighieri
- 30 David Hartley
- 31 David Hume
- 32 Democritus
- 33 Desiderius Erasmus
- 34 Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
- 35 Diogenes of Sinope
- 36 Donald Davidson
- 37 Edmund Husserl
- 38 Edward Sapir
- 39 Empedocles
- 40 Epictetus
- 41 Epicurus of Samos
- 42 Erich Fromm
- 43 Ernst Mach
- 44 Erwin Schrodinger
- 45 Euclid
- 46 Francis Bacon
- 47 Francis Herbert Bradley
- 48 Franz Brentano
- 49 Friedrich Nietzsche
- 50 Friedrich Schleiermacher
- 51 Gabriel Marcel
- 52 Galileo Galilei
- 53 George Berkeley
- 54 George Edward Moore
- 55 George Fox
- 56 George Henry Lewes
- 57 George Santayana
- 58 Giambattista Vico
- 59 Gilbert Ryle
- 60 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- 61 Gottlob Frege
- 62 Gregor Johann Mendel
- 63 Hans-Georg Gadamer
- 64 Henri Bergson
- 65 Henry David Thoreau
- 66 Henry More
- 67 Heraclitus of Ephesus
- 68 Hilary Putnam
- 69 Hippocrates
- 70 Immanuel Kant
- 71 Isaac Newton
- 72 James Clerk Maxwell
- 73 Jean Jacques Rousseau
- 74 Jean Nicod
- 75 Jean-Paul Sartre
- 76 Johannes Kepler
- 77 John Calvin
- 78 John Henry Newman
- 79 John Langshaw Austin
- 80 Jonathan Edwards
- 81 Jose Ortega Y Gasset
- 82 Jules Henri Poincare
- 83 Karl Jaspers
- 84 Karl Popper
- 85 Karl Rahner
- 86 Leucippus
- 87 Lucretius
- 88 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 89 Marcus Aurelius
- 90 Marie Antoine Condorcet
- 91 Martin Buber
- 92 Martin Heidegger
- 93 Martin Luther
- 94 Mary Wollstonecraft
- 95 Max Planck
- 96 Meister Eckhart
- 97 Melissus of Samos
- 98 Michael Dummett
- 99 Michel de Montaigne
- 100 Miguel de Unamuno Y Jugo
- 101 Moritz Schlick
- 102 Moses Maimonides
- 103 Nelson Goodman
- 104 Nicholas Copernicus
- 105 Nicolas Malebranche
- 106 Niels Bohr
- 107 Origen
- 108 Parmenides of Elea
- 109 Paul Tillich
- 110 Peter Abelard
- 111 Peter Frederick Strawson
- 112 Pierre Bayle
- 113 Pierre Gassendi
- 114 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- 115 Pierre-Maurice Duhem
- 116 Plato
- 117 Plotinus
- 118 Ptolemy
- 119 Pythagoras of Samos
- 120 Ralph Barton Perry
- 121 Ralph Cudworth
- 122 Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 123 Reinhold Niebuhr
- 124 Rene Descartes
- 125 Richard Avenarius
- 126 Richard von Mises
- 127 Robin George Collingwood
- 128 Roy Wood Sellars
- 129 Rudolf Carnap
- 130 Rudolf Steiner
- 131 Rudolph Hermann Lotze
- 132 Saint Anselm of Canterbury
- 133 Saint Augustine
- 134 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
- 135 Saint Bonaventure
- 136 Saint John of the Cross
- 137 Saint Teresa of Avila
- 138 Saul Kripke
- 139 Sextus Empiricus
- 140 Sigmund Freud
- 141 Simone de Beauvoir
- 142 Simone Weil
- 143 Socrates
- 144 Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
- 145 Thomas Aquinas
- 146 Thomas Henry Huxley
- 147 Thomas Jefferson
- 148 Thomas More
- 149 Thomas Paine
- 150 Thomas Reid
- 151 Thomas Samuel Kuhn
- 152 Voltaire
- 153 Werner Heisenberg
- 154 Wilhelm Dilthey
- 155 Willard Van Orman Quine
- 156 William Blake
- 157 William Godwin
- 158 William James
- 159 William of Ockham
- 160 Zeno of Citium
- 161 Zeno of Elea
- 162 Related:
Albert Camus
Albert Camus (1913-1960). Ideas - Absurdity lies in the opposition between the human need for meaning, on the one hand, and the unconcerned and meaningless world, on the other. - The presence of the absurd makes the problem of suicide the most fundamental philosophical question. - The absurd does not dictate death; what gives life...
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (1879-1855). Ideas - Coordinate space and time are not absolute, and the simultaneity of events is observer-dependent, but the speed of light is invariant (the special theory of relativity). - Mass is a form of energy, interchangeable with other forms according to the relation E = mc2. - Gravitational force is locally indistinguishable...
Alexius von Meinong
Alexius von Meinong (1853-1920). Alexius von Meinong was born to a noble German family in Lemberg, which was part of Austria and later became part of Poland. Today it is called Lviv and is in Ukraine. He was an Austrian philosopher who worked at the University of Graz. He was a student of Franz Brentano...
Alfred Jules Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989). Alfred Jules Ayer was lecturer and research fellow at Oxford's Christ Church College from 1933 to 1944. Then he was fellow (1944-1945) and dean (1945-1946) of Wadham College. From 1946 to 1959 Ayer was Grote professor of the philosophy of mind and logic at the University of London, and in...
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). Ideas - The basic concrete entities are not enduring subsstances, but events (later: ' actual entities' or 'actual occasions') related by their space-time relations and exemplifying their qualitative and mathematical patterns (later: 'eternal objects'). - Time is differentiated from space by the acts of inheriting patterns from the past (later: 'causal...
Antisthenes
Antisthenes (444-371 BC). Antisthenes, an Athenian philosopher, was born in Athens about 440 BCE. of a Phrygian or Thracian mother, and thus was only a half citizen. In his youth he was engaged in military exploits, and acquired fame by the valor which he displayed in the battle of Tanagra. His first studies were under...
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794). Ideas - In any chemical reaction, mass is conserved: Matter is neither created nor destroyed; only the form of the matter is altered. - Precise measurements of the weights and volumes of substances involved in experiments must be made if the researcher hopes to explain the nature of the reactions. - Precision...
Archimedes
Archimedes (287-212 BC). Ideas - Convergence methods, in which a curvilinear figure is bounded inside and out by similar rectilinear figures, can approximate the area of the curved figure to any degree of accuracy: Using convergence methods, the value of pi is found to be greater than 3 10/71 and less than 3 1/7. -...
Aristotle
Aristotle (384-322 BC). Ideas - Ideas do not have an independent, extra-mental subsistence, but exist in things. - The material substratum, which is the potential for the existence of finite things, must be distinguished from absolute nonbeing or privation. - The substances of things are a union of form and matter. - Body and soul...
Arnold Geulincx
Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669). Arnold Geulincx was a Flemish Cartesian philosopher who was one of the proponents of occasionalism. Originally a Roman Catholic, Geulincx adopted Calvinism in 1658. He taught at Leuven and later at Leiden. His major works, “Ethica” and “Metaphysica Vera”, were published posthumously. Arnold Geulincx is best known for his work as an ethicist....
Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975). Ideas - The proper study of history involves studying civilizations rather than nations or cultural periods. - Civilizations arise by the response of creative individuals to challenges presented by situations of special difficulty. - Progress in civilization consists in meeting difficulties by responding in creative ways that are internal and spiritual rather...
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Ideas - The world is nothing but the product of our perception and reason and exists only through and for the perceiving subject. - Reality is in itself nothing but will (an aimless energy), and will is known only as idea (representation), the objectivity of the will. - The body is the...
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte (1798-1857). Ideas - All human thinking, both for individual persons and for historical cultures, follows the law of the three stages: first seeking explanation in animistic purposes (the theological stage), then in abstract entities (the metaphysical stage), and finally in lawful observable correlations among variables (the positive stage). -...
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand (1905-1982). Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision which sustained her throughout her life. At the age of nine she...
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce (1866-1952). Ideas - A work of art is an intuition, an image expressive of and unified by feelings. - Art is lyrical in that it is expressive of life and feeling; it has aesthetic universally that stems from its origin in intuition. - Art is independent of all other expressions of human reason....
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970). Ideas - The Theory of Types: Sentences may not be only true or false but meaningless because of inconcsistent uses of language. - The Theory of Descriptions: Existence is a property of propositional functions; it is not a property of things. - All knowledge of the world is derived from...
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). Ideas - The weakness of human reason leads to ultimate, complete skepticism. - The misery of man without God is the ordinary human condition. - Scientific knowledge cannot provide haappiness. - There is the need for grace to be moral and happy. - It is the nature of science that it is...
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480-525). Ideas - True happiness is found in pursuit of the highest good, which is God. - Temporal possessions, honor, fame, pleasure and power are inadequate and disappointing goals; only the happiness that comes from loving God cannot be taken away by misfortune. - Even though God foresees the free acts...
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855). Ideas - Mathematics requires a new rigor in which Greek standards of precision are applied to the subject matter of contemporary mathematics. - The goal of science is the pursuit of truth 'for its own sake'. - Due to its intrinsic independence from the material and the practical, 'mathematics is the...
Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997), a leading member of logical positivism, was born in Orianenburg, Germany, in 1905. Carl G. Hempel studied at the Realgymnasium at Berlin and, in 1923, he was admitted at the University of Gottingen where he studied mathematics with David Hilbert and Edmund Landau and symbolic logic with Heinrich Behmann. Hempel was...
Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Ideas - There are particular personality types characterized by extraversion or introversion, and four personality functions: sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition. - Within each individual is found a personal unconscious, which is composed of one's personal history, and a collective unconscious, which is composed of images or archetypes common to all...
Charles Bonnet
Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), a Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva on March 13, 1720, to a French family driven into Switzerland by the religious persecution in the 16th century. He made law his profession, but his favorite pursuit was the study of natural science. The account of the ant-lion in N.A. Pluches...
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). Ideas - Species are related to each other by descent, with the changes from their common ancestors being caused by the survival and reproduction of advantageous genetic variants. - Overpopulation and the resulting shortage of food create the pressure that causes organisms that have advantageous genetic variants to produce a greater...
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Ideas - What we expect from our forms of inference is that they give us true conclusions from true premises - if not all the time, then at least most of the time. - Beliefs are established habits of action. - Consider all the possible effects that might conceivably have practical...
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), an orator and statesman of Rome, was born on January 3, 106 BC. His life coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, and he was an important actor in many of the significant political events of his time, and his writings are now a valuable source of...
Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788). Biography Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was the French naturalist perhaps most responsible for the rise of European interest in natural history during the eighteenth century. His massive Histoire naturelle (36 volumes) set out to organize all that was then known about the natural world. He was the...
Confucius
Confucius (551-479 BC). Biography Confucius, the great Chinese sage, was born June 19th, 551 B.C. at Shang-ping, in the country of Lu, to a poor descendant of a deposed noble family. His real name was Kong, but his disciples called him Kong-fu-tse, (i.e. Kong the Master, or Teacher,) which the Jesuit missionaries Latinized into Confucius....
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (1261-1321). Ideas - Love is the movement of the spirit and the primordial energy of the universe. - The energy of love is manifested in three actions. - In romantic love, the psyche moves toward the object of its erotic affections. - In philosophical love, the psyche contemplates the world of nature through...
David Hartley
David Hartley (1705-1757). Biography David Hartley was an English philosopher and founder of the Associationist school of psychology. He was educated at Bradford grammar school and Jesus College, Cambridge, of which society he became a fellow in 1727. Originally intended for the Church, he was deterred from taking orders by certain scruples as to signing...
David Hume
David Hume (1711-1776). Ideas - All our ideas are derived originally from sense impressions. - Since our beliefs are based not on reason but imagination, they cannot be rationally justified. - We cannot establish the existence of an external, physical world. - Causation must be explained subjectively rather than objectively. - There are no minds...
Democritus
Democritus (460-360 BC). Biography Democritus was born at Abdera. His father was from a noble family and of great wealth, and contributed largely towards the entertainment of the army of Xerxes on his return to Asia. As a reward for this service the Persian monarch gave and other Abderites presents and left among them several...
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). Ideas - Perfectability is intrinsic in human beings. - Intrinsic perfectability implies the power of self-determination and moral achievement. - The examplar of moral achievement is Jesus Christ, whose life of humility, patience, and love is open for all Christians to imitate. - Interior piety, scriptural exegesis, and study of classical and...
Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev
Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907). Ideas - Elements placed according to the value of their atomic weights present a clear periodicity of properties. Biography The youngest, of at least, fourteen children, Dimitri Ivanovitch Mendeleev was born at Tobolsk, Siberia, on 7th February, 1834. His father, Ivan, was the director of the local gymnasium, and his mother,...
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope (412-323 BC). Biography Diogenes was a Cynic philosopher of Sinope. His father, Icesias, a banker, was convicted of debasing the public coin, and was obliged to leave the country; or, according to another account, his father and himself were charged with this offense, and the former was thrown into prison, while the...
Donald Davidson
Donald Herbert Davidson (1917–2003). Davidson studied at Harvard, under Alfred North Whitehead, among others, and wrote a dissertation on Plato's Philebus. His interests at this time were mainly in the "history of ideas," broadly construed, but under the influence of W. V. Quine, whom he often credits as his mentor, he began to gradually turn...
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Ideas - The edifice of scientific knowledge must be built up by rigorously securing each step through direct direct intuitive insight, without presuppositions. - Phenomenology provides a founding 'first philosophy' for all knowledge by its method of describing the essence of 'the things themselves' as they are constituted in consciousness. - The...
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (1884-1939). Edward Sapir was born in Lauenburg, Germany in 1884 to an orthodox Jewish family. He emigrated to the United States in 1889 and lived in New York City. He received his Bachelors Degree in 1904 and his Ph.D. in 1909 from Columbia University where he came under the influence of Franz Boas....
Empedocles
Empedocles (490-430 BC). Empedocles was born in Acragas on the south coast of Sicily. The name Acragas is Greek, while the Latin name for the town was Agrigentum. Later the town was called Girgenti and more recently it became known by its present name of Agrigento. It was one of the most beautiful cities of...
Epictetus
Epictetus (50-125). Major Ideas - Only bodies exist, but bodies are combinations of two fundamental principles, logos, a rational principle, and physis, a creative principle. - God is nature: Logos, the rational principle, accounts for the order and unity of the universe; nature is thus intelligent and intelligible. - Because God is nature, the universe...
Epicurus of Samos
Epicurus of Samos (341-270 BC). Ideas - All sensation is true, sensation is the primary source of knowledge. - The two criteria of knowledge are a clear view and noncontradiction. - The universe is wholly material; it consists of material and void. - Nothing is created out of nothing, and nothing is destroyed: The universe...
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm (1900-1980). Erich Fromm, an internationally renowned German psychologist and humanistic philosopher, was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father was a business man and, according to Erich, rather moody. His mother was frequently depressed. In other words, like quite a few of the people we've looked at, his childhood wasn't very happy....
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach (1838-1916). Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. Ernst Mach was born in Chrlice, Czech Republic. He was educated at home until the age of 14, then went briefly to gymnasium before entering the University of Vienna at 17. There he studied mathematics, physics and philosophy, and received a doctorate in physics...
Erwin Schrodinger
Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961). Ideas - Partial differential equations representing wave phenomena best describe action on the atomic level. - Quantum physics can explain the persistence and the spontaneous mutation of genetic material. - The Hindu philosophy of Vedanta best matches the insights of modern physics. Biography Erwin Schrödinger was born on August 12, 1887, in...
Euclid
Euclid (350,325-275 BC). Major Ideas - A rigorous, systematic treatment of mathematics requires the statement of all assumptions and the proof of all propositions by means of uniform methodology. - All mathematical quantities can be expressed by geometrical figures, either lines, areas, or solids. - Physical events can be modeled using mathematical expressions. - Space...
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Ideas - The purpose of scientific knowledge is to make possible great works for the betterment of the human condition. - Experiments are essential to the testing of theories. - The human mind is prey to certain typical intellectual failures. - In the generation and testing of theories, the negative instance is...
Francis Herbert Bradley
Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924). He was born at Clapham, Surrey, England. He was the child of Charles Bradley, an Evangelical preacher, and his second wife, Emma Linton. In 1865, he entered University College, Oxford. He was a member of the movement known as British idealism and famous for his pluralistic approach to philosophy. His pluralistic...
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Brentano (1838-1917). Franz Brentano studied philosophy at the universities of Munich, Würzburg, Berlin (with Trendelenburg) and Münster. He had a special interest in Aristotle and scholastic philosophy. He wrote his dissertation in Tübingen On the manifold sense of Being in Aristotle. Subsequently he began to study theology and entered the seminar in Munich...
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). Ideas - Self-deception is a particularly destructive characteristic of Western culture. - Life is the will to power; our natural desire is to dominate and to reshape the world to fit our own preferences and to assert our personal strength to the fullest degree possible. - Struggle, through which individuals achieve...
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was a theologian and philosopher. The son of a Prussian army chaplain of the Reformed confession, he was born at Breslau. He was educated in a Moravian school at Niesky in upper Lusatia, and at Barby near Halle. Moravian theology soon ceased to satisfy him, and...
Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). French philosopher, dramatist, and critic, b. Paris. A leading Christian existentialist, he became a Roman Catholic in 1929. He called himself a 'concrete philosopher', indicating a reaction to his early idealism. He saw philosophy not as formulation of a system but rather as a personal reflection on the human situation. He held...
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Ideas - Observation bears out the truth of the Copernican theory that the earth is not the center of the universe. - Aristotle's claim that heavier bodies fall faster thab lighter ones can be disproved by observation. - Controlled experimentation and the use of quantitative methods of reporting observations yield better results...
George Berkeley
George Berkeley (1685-1753). Ideas - To be is to be perceived. (A physical thing exists only when it is perceived through the use of the senses.) - Physical things are complexes of ideas (sensations). - Since no idea or sensation exists outside the mind, no physical thing exists outside the mind. - The primary qualities...
George Edward Moore
George Edward Moore (1873-1958). George Edward Moore, also known as G.E. Moore, (November 4, 1873 – October 24, 1958) was a distinguished and hugely influential English philosopher who was educated and taught at the University of Cambridge. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and (before them) Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of the...
George Fox
George Fox (1624-1691). Ideas - God can be experienced by every person through the presence of the indwelling Christ or Spirit. - Every human being must be respected because there is 'that of God' in everyone. - Social inequalities are, therefore, abhorrent and must be eliminated. - Worship takes place wherever the soul discovers God;...
George Henry Lewes
George Henry Lewes (1817-1878). George Henry Lewes was a British philosopher and literary critic. He was born in London, a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes, the actor. He was educated in London, Jersey, Brittany, and finally at Dr Charles Burney's school in Greenwich. Having abandoned successively a commercial and a medical career, he seriously thought...
George Santayana
George Santayana (1863-1952). Ideas - Beauty is pleasure objectified - pleasure regarded as the quality of an object. - Belief in the existence of anything is incapable of proof. - By animal faith we believe in ourselves and a world of which we are a part. - Knowledge is faith mediated by symbols. - Spirit...
Giambattista Vico
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Ideas - There is no fixed human nature that remains identical regardless of time, place, and circumstance; human nature develops in accordance with self-knowledge and with insight into the essences of things. - A Divine Providence gives human beings those nonrational creative capacities, operating on associative principles, that will produce false beliefs...
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976). A graduate of Oxford, Gilbert Ryle became a tutor at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1945, he became Waynflete professor of metaphysical philosophy. From 1947 to 1971 he was editor of the philosophical journal 'Mind'. Like Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ryle was concerned with problems caused by the confusion of grammatical with logical distinctions. He...
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Ideas - There is an infinity of individual substances. - The irreducible, indivisible, indestructibele unit of substrance is the 'monad'. - God is the ultimate, necessary being who is the sufficient reason for the existence of all other beings and who is the creator and orderer of all monads. - Each...
Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Frege was born in Wismar. He started studying at the University of Jena in 1869 and moved to Göttingen after two years, where he received his Ph.D. in 1873. After returning to Jena two years later, he became lecturer of mathematics. In 1879, he was made associate professor and in 1896 became...
Gregor Johann Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884). Ideas - The inheritance of characteristics is governed by pairs of discrete elements derived from each parent. - These parental elements pass into the germ cells of the offspring without influencing each other; this is the law of segregation. - The inheritance of one element does not govern the inheritance of...
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002). Gadamer was born in Marburg, Germany, as the son of a pharmaceutical chemist who later also served as the rector of the university there. Gadamer resisted his father's urging to take up the natural sciences and grew more and more interested in the humanities. He grew up and studied in Breslau under...
Henri Bergson
Henri Louis Bergson (1859-1941). Ideas - There are two methods of intellectual inquiry: intuition and analysis. - Analysis understands reality in terms of stability, predictability, and spatial location; intuition, on the other hand, experiences growth, novelty, and temporal duration. - True donation is experienced only in the human person, and that duration is preserved in...
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Ideas - The search for ultimate begins with simplification and the dispelling of the superfluities of life, and with the desire for clarity of vision and spiritual alertness. - There exists within each human being a moral sense and an intuitive capacity for the apprehension of spiritual turths. - Trancendental spiritual...
Henry More
Henry More (1614-1687). Ideas - All knowledge is conditional on the validity of our faculties. - The world consists of active spirits and inert matter. - God's existence can be proven. - The Platonic theory of the universe best fits with the findings of modern science. Biography Henry More was born at Grantham. Both his...
Heraclitus of Ephesus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (6TH CENTURY BC). Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher of the late 6th century BC, lived in Ephesus, an important city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, not far from Miletus, the birthplace of philosophy. We know nothing about his life other than what can be gleaned from his own statements, for all...
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam (1926- ). Putnam taught at Northwestern University, Princeton University, and MIT, until he became Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic at Harvard University in 1976. Drawing on his expertise in the theory of recursive functions and Turing machines, Putnam formulated a philosophical position that he named 'functionalism' in the...
Hippocrates
Hippocrates (460-370 BC). Major Ideas - Diseases have natural origins: They do not arise from divine action; the course of diseases and their critical days can be found observation and experience. - Good health results from a balance of fluids (humors) in the body; disease results from an imbalance. - The balance of fluids -...
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Ideas - Although all knowledge begins with experience, it does not all arise out of experience. - Knowledge of an orderly world is made possible through the complementary activities of the senses and the mind. - The matter of our experience is due to our senses and its form is contributed by...
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Ideas - Invention of differential and integral calculus. - Clarification of concepts of inertia and force. - Formulation of three laws of motion, making possible the science of rational mechanics. - Proof of the composite nature of white light. - Construction of the first refleecting telescope. - Insistence on the experimental basis...
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Ideas - Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of a single unified force of nature, best described as dynamical as dynamical fields. - Light consists of transverse electromagnetic waves, and is but one portion of a broad spectrum of such waves. - Thermodynamic laws and properties of gases may be derived...
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Ideas - Man is by nature good; society is the cause of corruption and vice. - In a state of nature, the individual is characterized by healthy self-love; self-love is accompanied by a natural compassion. - In society, natural self-love becomes corrupted into a venal pride, which seeks only the good...
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Ideas - For human beings, 'existence precedes essence'; we are defined by our choices and actions and not by a fixed 'human nature'. - The direction a person's life will take is always in question and a matter of contingency. - We exist in situations - typically these are interpersonal and social...
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Ideas - God did not create the universe haphazardly. A rational architecture underlies the structure of the solar system. - Three laws govern the motion of the planets: 1. Planets move in elliptical, not circular orbits, 2. The velocities of the planets are not uniform but vary at different points in their...
John Calvin
John Calvin (1509-1564). Ideas - Though God's essential nature is incomprehensible, partial knowledge of God is available through God's self-revelation. - The Bible is the sole source of this adapted revelation. - The Bible reveals God as the triume crateor of everything, actively and universally ruling all aspects of the continuing creation. - The Bible...
John Henry Newman
Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890). Ideas - All things human develop and change in time, including the Church institution and doctrine. - It is a collective responsibility to see that ideas develop rightly and in a continuous fashion. - A university is a place of teaching universal knowledge to produce intelligent members of society by...
John Langshaw Austin
John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960). British philosopher. A graduate of Oxford, he was a fellow of All Souls (1933–35) and Magdalen (1935–52) colleges before he became White's professor of moral philosophy (1952–60), also at Oxford. He strongly influenced analytic philosophy, urging that the use of words be closely examined and holding that the distinctions of ordinary...
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). Ideas - The world was created out of and is maintained only by the abundance, grace, and love of the sovereign and radically trancendent God, who foreordains all of life according to his provodentoal but hidden will. - Although themselves endowed with will and reason, both of which operate solely within God's...
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1883-1955). Ideas - Human beings and their circumstances exist in a dynamic interplay. - 'I am I and my circumstance' is the phrase that conveys this dynamic interplay. - The individual can influence his circumstance but he cannot disregard it. - How the individual influences his circumstance is his 'quehacer vital',...
Jules Henri Poincare
Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912). Poincare was born on April 29,1854 in Nancy. Poincare's family was influential. His cousin Raymond was the President and the Prime Minister of France, and his father Leon was a professor of medicine at the University of Nancy. His sister Aline married the spiritualist philosopher Emile Boutroux. Poincare studied mining engineering,...
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers (1883-1969). Karl Jaspers (pronounced “Yaspers”) was born 23 February 1883 in Oldenburg to Carl William and Henriette Jaspers, a respected family within the community. Carl was a lawyer, the local sheriff for a time, and a bank director. Jaspers did well in secondary school, which he atttended from 1892–1901. At graduation he had...
Karl Popper
Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994). Born in Vienna (then Austria-Hungary) in 1902 to middle-class parents of Jewish origins, Karl Popper was educated at the University of Vienna. He took a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1928, and taught in secondary school from 1930 to 1936. In 1937, the rise of Nazism and the threat of the Anschluss...
Karl Rahner
Karl Rahner (1904-1984). Ideas - In acts of knowledge and volition, a person experiences the inexhaustable depth and richness of the totality of being; this experience is an unthematic, nonconceptional preapprehension of God as the end of all dynamic acts of the human spirit. - The triune God reveals his inner essence throughout the history...
Leucippus
Leucippus (5TH CENTURY BC). Leucippus was the founder of atomism. We know almost nothing about his life, and his book appears to have been incorporated in the collected works of Democritus. No writer subsequent to Theophrastos seems to have been able to distinguish his teaching from that of his more famous disciple. Indeed his very...
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus (99-55 BC). Lucretius was a Roman poet and the author of the philosophical epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe), a comprehensive exposition of the Epicurean world-view. Very little is known of the poet’s life, though a sense of his character and personality emerges vividly from his poem. The...
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Ideas - Language and the world share a common logical form. - Sentences are logical pictures of the world: The logical relations between the elements of a sentence reflect the relations between the elements in the world. - Sentences can show their form but they cannot say it; sentences that attempt to...
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius (121-180). Major Ideas - The Universe is governed by reason, which is God. - In a rational universe, everything that happens is not only necessitated but good. - Human happiness consists in a life lived in accordance with nature and reason. - Though his actions are necessitated, an individual becomes free by acting...
Marie Antoine Condorcet
Marie-Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794). Ideas - There is limited certainty in all branches of human knowledge. - Probability theory can be applied to natural and social sciences. - Mankind is infinitely perfectible. - There can be continuous progress and improvement in human affairs. - Mathematics can be applied to the...
Martin Buber
Martin Buber (1878-1965). Ideas - The I-Thou approach to relationships is the only way people can be fully authentic; only a part of our being is expressed in the I-It relationship. - Scripture and biblical commentary are of great importance but are not infallible. - Religious law is not immutable but applicable to the times...
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Ideas - Although the maning of being is the basic issue for philosophy, its true nature has been forgotten and concealed. - Human beings are uniquely open to being but must be understood in terms of existential categories rather than traditional, objectifying categories. - Being must be understood in terms of temporality....
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (1483-1546). Ideas - Human nature is corrupt, weak, self-centered, and in a state of rebellion from God; the fruit of the fall from grace is death. - God's laws show sinners their distance from God and arouse a desire for redemption. - Although God in his justice could condemn humanity, he chooses out...
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). Ideas - Unwilling submission to any person, institution, or custom is limiting, degrading, and destructive. - Reason, infallible and God-given, should control all human thought and action. - Women must have the freedom to cultivate reason, the key to self-improvement and social change. - Environment and education shape character and morality. -...
Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (1858-1947). Ideas - The energy of electromagnetic radiation (such as light, X-rays, and ratio waves) is found only in discrete packets of fine size: quanta. - The amount of such energy must be a whole-number multiple of h (Planck's constant: 6.55 x 10-27 erg-seconds). Biography Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck...
Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327). Ideas - Beyond 'God' lies the Godhead; that is, 'God' as Father, Son and Spirit is merely representation of the true God, or Godhead. - The ground of God and the ground of the human soul are the same; thus God, or union with God, is to be sought within oneself: Here...
Melissus of Samos
Melissus of Samos (5TH CENTURY BC). Melissus of Samos, a Greek philosopher of the Eleatic School, was born probably not later than 470 B.C. According to Diogenes Lartius, he was not only a thinker, but also a political leader in his native town, and was in command of the fleet which defeated the Athenians in...
Michael Dummett
Michael A. E. Dummett (1925- ). Michael Dummett was born in 1925. He attended Sandroyd School and Winchester College, and served in the armed forces from 1943 to 1947. Although he was educated within the traditions of the Anglican Church at Winchester, by the age of 13 he regarded himself as an atheist. In 1944...
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). Ideas - An acceptance of the duality of the human condition (man's spiritual aspirations counterbalanced by the physical limitations of the body) enables man to pursue the masterpiece of living well. - A life committed to moderation is superior to one that has allowed excesses and extremes. - The senses through...
Miguel de Unamuno Y Jugo
Miguel de Unamuno Y Jugo (1864-1936). Ideas - History is the immediate historic moment that is happening, while intrahistory is an eternal, historical present. - The intrahistory of Spain is its soul, that which is genuinely pure and vital. - The landspace, language, and art of Castile express the soul of Spain. - To find...
Moritz Schlick
F. A. Moritz Schlick (1882-1936). Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle, was born on April 14, 1882 in Berlin. After studying in both Heidelberg and Lausanne, he returned to Berlin to complete his doctorate in physics under the direction of Max Planck. Schlick then held teaching positions at the universities of Rostock and...
Moses Maimonides
Moses Maimonides (1135-1204). Ideas - The study of philosophy and traditional Jewish law can be brought into harmony. - The existence of God is subject to rational demonstration. - Unity, incorporeality, and priority are qualities of God. - Prophecy is a degree of mental and moral perfection to which all may aspire. - The entire...
Nelson Goodman
Nelson Goodman (1906-1998). American philosopher, born in Somerville, Massachusetts. Received his Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 1941. He taught at Tufts (1945-46), the University of Pennsylvania (1946–64), and Brandeis University (1964–67) before becoming professor of philosophy at Harvard (1967). A proponent of nominalism, he has worked with theories of inductive logic and helped to identify...
Nicholas Copernicus
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543). Ideas - Motion is relative. - The earth is not at the center of the universe. - The sun, the planets, and the stars do not revolve around the earth; rather, the earth is one of the planets, and it revolves around the sun, as do the other planets. - The apparent...
Nicolas Malebranche
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). Ideas - We see all things in God. - The world of intelligible extension exists only in God is coeternal with God. - To be is to be conceived. - All that we are aware of are ideas and feelings. - We have no direct or indirect knowledge of an external physical...
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr (1885-1962). Ideas - The electrons that surround the nucleus of an atom can only occupy certain dscrete states - those states being defined by Planck's constant, h. 'In-between' states are not permissible. - The configuration of electrons in an atom is the primary factor that determines the chemical properties of an element. -...
Origen
Origen of Alexandria (185-254). Ideas - God as the Ground of Being (the First God) is unknowable except to the Logos-Son and Spirit eternally generated by God. - God, however, has communicated throught the Logos-Son (Christ: Wisdom, Power) not only in the incarnation in Jesus but in Moses and the prophets and, in a qualified...
Parmenides of Elea
Parmenides of Elea (C. 515 B.C. - AFTER 450 B.C.). Major Ideas - A contrast must be made by philosophy between 'the way of truth', concerning the oneness and changelessness of being, and 'the way of seeming', concerning our perception of change. - Being or 'it is' is the fullness of all that exists; non-being,...
Paul Tillich
Paul Tillich (1886-1965). Ideas - Human beings are ultimately concerned with the fundamentals of being and meaning. - The nominalist dichotomy of subject and object leads both to naturalism and supernaturalism; naturalism fails to appreciate the dynamic power and purpose of all being. while supernaturalism fails to appreciate the interpenetration of the sacred and the...
Peter Abelard
Peter Abelard (1079-1142). Ideas - Universals, while not real in and of themselves, have a linguistic and intellectual reality that derives from their participation in particulars. - Authority, while essential, is by itself insufficient to an understanding of dogma; reason must understand dogma by analogies from the material world. - The classics of pre-Christian philosophy...
Peter Frederick Strawson
Peter Frederick Strawson (1919- ). Peter Frederick Strawson, British philosopher, a graduate of Oxford, was born in 1919. An influential spokesman for so-called ordinary language philosophy, he began teaching at Oxford in 1947 and from 1968 to 1987 was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics. In an early article, “On Referring” (Mind, 1950), he disputed Bertrand Russell’s...
Pierre Bayle
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). Ideas - All theories - philosophical, theological, and even scientific - can be challenged by arguments that show they are contradictory and/or unbelievable. - Since no beliefs can be proved to be true or false, all should be tolerated. - Morality is completely separate from religious belief; a society of atheists could...
Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Ideas - Aristotelianism is useless as a philosophy or basis for science. - Skepticism, in a mitigated form, allows for a limited knowledge. - Epicurean atomism is the best hypothesis for explaining the natural world. - Epicureanism can be modified so that it is compatible with Christian beliefs. Biography Pierre Gassendi was...
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Ideas - Evolution, cosmogenesis, has a direction. - Evolution ascends toward a final point, or Omega, which exerts an attraction on the process although it stands outside of it. - Evolution has a within as well as a without, taking place on both the physical and psychic levels. - Tangential...
Pierre-Maurice Duhem
Pierre-Maurice Duhem (1861-1916). French physicist and philosopher and historian of science. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure he taught at Lille (1887–1893), Rennes (1893–1894), and Bordeaux (1894–1916). His extension and application of the thermodynamic potential to topics in chemistry ranks him among the founders of modern physical chemistry. His Traité d'énergétique générale (2 vol.,...
Plato
Plato (429-347 BC). Ideas - The goal of intellectual inquiry is to discover the eternal immutable forms of 'ideas', which serve as the essence and ideal of all things; in this way a true philosopher seeks wisdom. - These eternal truths, already in the mind, can be recalled by the imaterial and immortal intellect; they...
Plotinus
Plotinus (204-270). Ideas - The soul is more important and real than the body or any other material object. - In its pure state, the World-Soul is the same as the Intellect (or Mind). - The Intellect is a system of Platonic ideas that exists simultaneously in all individual souls. - Above the Intellect is...
Ptolemy
Ptolemy (100-175). Major Ideas - The position of the celestial bodies can be determined with the help of a kinematic model: These bodies move on eccentric and epicyclic circles with uniform velocities, even though their velocities are not uniform when viewed from the earth; these circles lie inside the sphere of the fixed stars; carefully...
Pythagoras of Samos
Pythagoras of Samos (569-475 BC). Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos, Greece in 569 BC. He was a Greek religious leader and a philosopher who made developments in astronomy, mathematics, and music theories. He moved to Croton (a city in southern Italy) and started a religious and philosophical school there. He had many...
Ralph Cudworth
Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Ideas - There is an ancient wisdom (prisca theology), known to all peoples. - We can have only limited knowledge of God. - All people, even atheists, have an idea of God. - The political explanation of religion is not adequate to explain Christianity. - A survey of religious knowledge, pagan and...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Ideas - The natural world is coursed through with the immanent flow of a deity - a 'world-soul' - both in and above the world. - The divine spirit can be approached in the immediacies if experiential existence. - The principle of immanence reveals that there is a democracy of spiritual...
Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). Ideas - The nature of the human being is flawed in its inclination to pride and power, but it exists in freedom under the shadow of God, is endowed with moral capacity, and in individual terms, can approach the ideal of Christian love. - God acts in history but is also hidden...
Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Ideas - The method for the discovery of truth is analytic and consists of four rules: 1. Accept nothing as true except what can be clearly perceived to be so and nothing more than can be perceived so clearly and distinctly that one cannot have occasion to doubt it, 2. Divide up...
Richard Avenarius
Richard Avenarius (1843-1896). Richard Avenarius, a German philosopher, was born in Paris. He taught in Zurich, where he became a professor in 1877. He founded the epistemological theory of knowledge known as empiriocriticism, in many parts touching upon ERICH MACH's views. According to empiriocriticism, the major task of philosophy is to develop a “natural concept...
Richard von Mises
Richard von Mises (1883-1953). Richard von Mises, Austrian-born American mathematician, engineer, and positivist philosopher, was born in Lvov when it was under Austrian control and known as Lemberg. His father, Arthur Edler von Mises, worked for the Austrian State Railways as a technical expert and his mother was Adele von Landau. Richard was the second...
Robin George Collingwood
Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943). Ideas - 'Mind' and 'body' do not represent two ontologically different substances; these terms denote diverse ways of considering, historically and physiologically, a human being. - The psychological theory of faculties understood as the capacity of parts of mind to work independently and in separation from one another is incorrect; the...
Roy Wood Sellars
Roy Wood Sellars (1880-1967). Roy Wood Sellars was born in Seaforth, Ontario, in 1880. He is the second son of Ford Wylis and Mary Stalker Sellars, he had a notable, predominantly Scottish ancestry. The Sellars came originally from the Glasgow region of Scotland, migrating first to Nova Scotia and then to Upper Canada (Ontario). They...
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970). Rudolf Carnap was born on May 18, 1891, in Ronsdorf, Germany. In 1898, after his father's death, his family moved to Barmen, where Carnap studied at the Gymnasium. From 1910 to1914 he studied philosophy, physics and mathematics at the universities of Jena and Freiburg. He studied Kant under Bruno Bauch and later...
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 and died in 1925. In his autobiography, The Course of My Life, he makes quite clear that the problems dealt with in The Philosophy of Freedom played a leading part in his life. His childhood was spent in the Austrian countryside, where his father was a...
Rudolph Hermann Lotze
Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817-1881). Rudolf Hermann Lotze was born on May 21, 1817. He was a German philosopher and psychologist who studied medicine and philosophy in Leipzig. He attempted to reconcile the concepts of mechanistic science with the principles of romantic idealism. He started with the idea that all phenomena are determined by the interaction...
Saint Anselm of Canterbury
Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). Ideas - God exists, for there is goodness in the world, and goodness an be good only through a supreme good that is good through itself, and only God is good through himself. - God exists, for since whatever exists does so only through something, there must be a supremely...
Saint Augustine
Saint Augustine (354-430). Ideas - Faith and understanding go hand in hand: Understand that you may believe; believe that you may understand. - True happiness consists in knowledge of God. - Father, Son and Spirit coinhere in the Godhead as the faculties if memory, intellect and will coinhere in the human mind. - Individual beings...
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Ideas - There is a natural simplicity in the very substance of the soul; for the soul, it is the same to be as to live, but it is not the same thing to be as yo live well or to live happily; nevertheless the soul can ascend to this....
Saint Bonaventure (1217-1274). Ideas - Traditional Christian doctrines are correct, and innovations are erroneous. - The wish to introduce new doctrines is the expression of a bad moral character, and so is curiosity (the wish to find things out independently of their relevance to salvation). - People need discipline not only of their conduct but...
Saint John of the Cross
Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591). Ideas - Substantial union with God is that by which the soul exists. - The union of likeness, also called transforming or mystical union, is that by which the soul becomes like God. - God is darkness to the soul in that the divine is essentially other than the...
Saint Teresa of Avila
Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). Ideas - God dwells within the soul. - The soul travels within herself tou nite with God. - One image for the soul is an interior castle with many mansions. - By practicing mental prayer, the soul enters the interior castle. - The first three mansions correspond to the purgative...
Saul Kripke
Saul Kripke (1940- ). Saul Kripke is an American philosopher now emeritus from (Princeton) and professor of philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center. He is best known for his attack on the descriptivist (Fregean, Russellian) theory of reference with respect to proper names, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of the...
Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus (2ND CENTURY-3RD CENTURY). Major Ideas - It is futile to attempt to determine external realities (the nonevident) by appeal to appearances (the evident). - We have access to only appearances and no reason to prefer one appearance to another. - Appearances vary according to the condition of the observer and the nature of...
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Ideas - Human behavior is the result of both heredity and environment. - By means of the techniques of free association and analysis of symbols, we may learn about the structure and functioning of self. - The model of self should be constructed in terms of the ;id; (which represents drives), the...
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). Ideas - As human beings, we live in a tragically anbiguous condition, but we must assume responsibility for the direction of our lives. - Every person is originally free. - Woman is the 'other'; she lives in a world in which men have compelled her to be the second sex. -...
Simone Weil
Simone Weil (1909-1943). Ideas - Thought is inextricably linked to action. - The person is a creation of natural and social forces and can ve 'decreated' by them. - Pure goodness for which the human aspires is found by God's direct descent and through the mediation of natural and social structures. - The suffering of...
Socrates
Socrates (469-399 BC). Socrates, the celebrated Greek philosopher and moralist, was born at Athens in the year 469 B.C. His father, Sophroniskus, was a sculptor and he followed the same profession in the early part of his life. His family was respectable in descent, but humble in point of means. He had the usual education...
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Ideas - As human beings, we are often in situations in which we must choose between incompatibloe alternatives. - God may place us religiously in paradoxical situations of anguished choice as a test of faith. - There are objective problems, but they cannot be answered objectively for the person, who must...
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). Ideas - The existence of God is not self-evident to reason, but it is demonstrable. - In God, essence and existence are inseparable, indeed, identical: It belongs to 'what' God is 'that' God is. - The essence of finite things is separable from their existence. - The finite order receives its existence...
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). Thomas Henry Huxley, the distinguished zoologist and advocate of Darwinism, madeseveral incursions into philosophy. From his youth he had studied its problems unsystematically; he had a way of going straight to the point in any discussion; and, judged by a literary standard, he was a great master of expository and argumentative...
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). Ideas - All human beings are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights. - Governments are established to protect the rights of citizens. - The right to work the land is a fundamental human right; consequently, a state that allows private ownership of land must provide employment to those who...
Thomas More
Thomas More (1478-1535). Ideas - A program of education grounded on ethics, the study Greek and LAtin, and the imitation of ancient pagan and Christian writers os the soundest plan for spiritual renewal and reform of the church and society. - Nature teaches that the best society is one whose aim is the temporal well-being...
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Ideas - The rights of humankind originate at birth. - Government should exist only for the security, happiness, and unity of humankind. - Republican government is based on reason and engenders freedom; government by hereditary succession is based on ignorance and reduces people to slavery. - Equality of natural property and the...
Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen, where he created the "Wise Club" (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the...
Thomas Samuel Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996). Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He received a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1949 and remained there as an assistant professor of general education and history of science. In 1956, Kuhn accepted a post at the University of California-Berkeley, where...
Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778). Ideas - All religions of the supernatural are based on ignorance and superstition. - The natural and human evils in the world cannot be reconciled with the view that this is the best of all possible worlds. - The order in the universe indicates that there is a Designer,...
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). Ideas - Anomalous experimental results in microscopic physics can be explained through the use of matrices. - There is an unsurpassable limit to the accuracy with which certain properties (position and momentum) of subatomic particles can simultaneous be determined. - Every measurement of a subatomic entity necessarily involves the substantial interference of...
Wilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911). German philosopher who made important contributions to a methodology of the humanities and other human sciences. He objected to the pervasive influence of the natural sciences and developed a philosophy of life emphasising historical contingency and changeability. His ‘Philosophy of Life’ pivoted on the notion of a living spirit which develops in...
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000). Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine began his philosophical studies at Oberlin College in his native state. He later studied the foundations of mathematical logic with Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard University, where Quine himself became professor of philosophy in 1936. His contributions to the development of contemporary philosophy often involve...
William Blake
William Blake (1757-1827). Ideas - Imagination is the Divine Being in every person. - All division is contrary to the infinite imagination (the body is not distinct from the soul). - Divisions, which emanate from the Fall (master/servant, rich/poor, male/female) hold some people in bondage; thus, humankind's fallen vision has produced the exploitation, oppression, and...
William Godwin
William Godwin (1756-1836). Ideas - Humankind is perfectible. - Reason tends to truth; truth leads to justice. - Government usurps private judgment and individual conscience; it is the greatest obstacle to human happiness. - Education and environment determine personality and character. - There are no rights, only duties; the fundamental moral duty is universal benevolence....
William James
William James (1842-1910). Ideas - Human consciousness is selective; it concentrates on some things and ignores others. - Ideas and beliefs are essentially plans for organizing and structuring our experience and world. - One cannot prove finally whether human action is free or determined, but there are good reasons, especially moral ones, for believing that...
William of Ockham
William of Ockham (1288-1349). Ideas - Nominalism rejects the view that there are universals (essences) in things; it emphasizes the experienced world of contingent beings. - The name used for a thing does not capture the essence of the thing, but is simply a conventional sign used to refer to the thing. - Logic seeks...
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC). Zeno of Citium (The Stoic) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium, Cyprus. Zeno was the son of a merchant and a student of Crates of Thebes. Zeno was, himself, a merchant until the age of 42, when he started a school. According to a Legend on one trip Zeno was...
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea(490-425 BC). Major Ideas - The Paradox of the Race Course argues that motion would require a process of infinite division. - The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise concludes that a swifter runner cannot overtake a slower. - The Paradox of the Arrow argues that an arrow cannot move in flight. -...