Philosophy (φιλοσοφία, 'love of wisdom', in
Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like
existence,
reason,
knowledge,
value,
mind, and
language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
Historically, many of the individual
sciences, such as
physics and
psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the
history of philosophy include
Western,
Arabic–Persian,
Indian, and
Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in
Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and
revelation. Indian philosophy combines the
spiritual problem of how to reach
enlightenment with the exploration of the nature of reality and the ways of arriving at knowledge. Chinese philosophy focuses principally on practical issues in relation to right social conduct, government, and
self-cultivation.
Bohr developed the
Bohr model of the
atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of
electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the
atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of
complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a
wave or a stream of particles. The notion of complementarity dominated Bohr's thinking in both science and philosophy. (Full article...)
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The Augustinian theodicy, named for the 4th- and 5th-century theologian and philosopher
Augustine of Hippo, is a type of
Christiantheodicy that developed in response to the
evidential problem of evil. As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an
omnipotent (all-powerful) and
omnibenevolent (all-loving)
God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher
John Hick, who classified them as "Augustinian". They typically assert that God is perfectly (ideally)
good, that he created the world
out of nothing, and that evil is the result of humanity's
original sin. The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as consequence of original sin and its continued presence due to humans' misuse of
free will and
concupiscence. God's goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering.
Augustine of Hippo was the first to develop the theodicy. He rejected the idea that evil exists in itself, instead regarding it as a corruption of goodness, caused by humanity's abuse of free will. Augustine believed in the existence of a physical
Hell as a punishment for sin, but argued that those who choose to accept the
salvation of
Jesus Christ will go to
Heaven. In the 13th century,
Thomas Aquinas – influenced by Augustine – proposed a similar theodicy based on the view that God is goodness and that there can be no evil in him. He believed that the existence of goodness allows evil to exist, through the fault of humans. Augustine also influenced
John Calvin, who supported Augustine's view that evil is the result of free will and argued that sin corrupts humans, requiring God's
grace to give moral guidance. (Full article...)
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Title page from the first English edition of Part I
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist
Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of
deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the
Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807.
It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a deistic
revival. British audiences, fearing increased
political radicalism as a result of the
French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the
Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of
revelation, leading him to reject
miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. In The Age of Reason, he promotes
natural religion and argues for the existence of a
creator god. (Full article...)
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In
political philosophy, a throffer is a proposal (also called an intervention) that mixes an offer with a threat which will be carried out if the offer is not accepted. The term was first used in print by political philosopher
Hillel Steiner; while other writers followed, it has not been universally adopted and it is sometimes considered synonymous with carrot and stick. Though the threatening aspect of a throffer need not be obvious, or even articulated at all, an overt example is: "Kill this man and receive £100; fail to kill him and I'll kill you."
Steiner differentiated offers, threats and throffers based on the preferability of compliance and noncompliance for the subject when compared to the normal course of events that would have come about were no intervention made. Steiner's account was criticised by philosopher Robert Stevens, who instead suggested that what was important in differentiating the kinds of intervention was whether performing or not performing the requested action was more or less preferable than it would have been were no intervention made. Throffers form part of the wider moral and political considerations of
coercion, and form part of the question of the possibility of
coercive offers. Contrary to received wisdom that only threats can be coercive, throffers lacking explicit threats have been cited as an example of coercive offers, while some writers argue that offers, threats and throffers may all be coercive if certain conditions are met. For others, by contrast, if a throffer is coercive, it is explicitly the threat aspect that makes it so, and not all throffers can be considered coercive. (Full article...)
Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the
Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork in the
Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the
Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect
Australasia. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of
biogeography", or more specifically of
zoogeography. (Full article...)
Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a
seminary school in
Graz, where he became an associate of
Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer
Tycho Brahe in
Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to
Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors
Matthias and
Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in
Linz, and was an adviser to
General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of
optics, being named the father of modern optics, in particular for his Astronomiae pars optica. He also invented an improved version of the
refracting telescope, the Keplerian telescope, which became the foundation of the modern refracting telescope, while also improving on the telescope design by
Galileo Galilei, who mentioned Kepler's discoveries in his work. (Full article...)
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Goldman,
c. 1911
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Lithuanian-born
anarchistrevolutionary, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of
anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Born in
Kaunas,
Lithuania (then within the
Russian Empire), to an
OrthodoxLithuanian Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Chicago
Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy,
women's rights, and
social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer
Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier
Henry Clay Frick as an act of
propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about
birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. (Full article...)
Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade (also known as Eliade or Eliade Rădulescu; Romanian pronunciation:[ˈi.onheliˈaderəduˈlesku]; January 6, 1802 – April 27, 1872) was a
Wallachian, later
Romanian academic,
Romantic and
Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician. A prolific translator of foreign literature into
Romanian, he was also the author of books on
linguistics and history. For much of his life, Heliade Rădulescu was a teacher at
Saint Sava College in
Bucharest, which he helped reopen. He was a founding member and first president of the
Romanian Academy.
Heliade Rădulescu is considered one of the foremost champions of
Romanian culture from the first half of the 19th century, having first risen to prominence through his association with
Gheorghe Lazăr and his support of Lazăr's drive for discontinuing education in
Greek. Over the following decades, he had a major role in shaping the modern Romanian language, but caused controversy when he advocated the massive introduction of
Italianneologisms into the
Romanian lexis. A
Romantic nationalist landowner siding with moderate
liberals, Heliade was among the leaders of the
1848 Wallachian revolution, after which he was forced to spend several years in exile. Adopting an original form of conservatism, which emphasized the role of the aristocratic
boyars in
Romanian history, he was rewarded for supporting the
Ottoman Empire and clashed with the
radical wing of the 1848 revolutionaries. (Full article...)
In his early life, Maximus was a civil servant, and an aide to the
Byzantine EmperorHeraclius. He gave up this life in the political sphere to enter the monastic life. Maximus had studied diverse schools of philosophy, and certainly what was common for his time, the Platonic dialogues, the works of Aristotle, and numerous later Platonic commentators on Aristotle and Plato, like
Plotinus,
Porphyry,
Iamblichus, and
Proclus. When one of his friends began espousing the
Christological position known as
Monothelitism, Maximus was drawn into the controversy, in which he supported an interpretation of the
Chalcedonian formula on the basis of which it was asserted that
Jesus had both a human and a divine
will. Maximus is
venerated in both the
Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox Churches. He was eventually persecuted for his Christological positions; following a trial, his tongue and right hand were mutilated. (Full article...)
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A stamp of Zhang Heng issued by
China Post in 1955
Zhang Heng began his career as a minor civil servant in
Nanyang. Eventually, he became Chief Astronomer, Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages, and then Palace Attendant at the imperial court. His uncompromising stance on historical and calendrical issues led to his becoming a controversial figure, preventing him from rising to the status of Grand Historian. His political rivalry with the palace
eunuchs during the reign of
Emperor Shun (r. 125–144) led to his decision to retire from the central court to serve as an administrator of
Hejian Kingdom in present-day
Hebei. Zhang returned home to Nanyang for a short time, before being recalled to serve in the capital once more in 138. He died there a year later, in 139. (Full article...)
Born and raised in
Albany, New York, Hand majored in philosophy at
Harvard College and graduated with honors from
Harvard Law School. After a relatively undistinguished career as a lawyer in Albany and New York City, he was appointed at the age of 37 as a
Manhattan federal district judge in 1909. The profession suited his detached and open-minded temperament, and his decisions soon won him a reputation for craftsmanship and authority. Between 1909 and 1914, under the influence of
Herbert Croly's social theories, Hand supported
New Nationalism. He ran unsuccessfully as the
Progressive Party's candidate for
chief judge of the
New York Court of Appeals in 1913, but withdrew from active politics shortly afterwards. In 1924, President
Calvin Coolidge elevated Hand to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which he went on to lead as the senior circuit judge (later retitled chief judge) from 1939 until his semi-retirement in 1951. Scholars have recognized the Second Circuit under Hand as one of the finest appeals courts in American history. Friends and admirers often lobbied for Hand's promotion to the Supreme Court, but circumstances and his political past conspired against his appointment. (Full article...)
In his Dream Pool Essays or Dream Torrent Essays (夢溪筆談; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle
compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by
Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of
true north in terms of
magnetic declination towards the
north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved
meridian determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the distance between the
pole star and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe
for another four hundred years (evidence of German sundials made circa 1450 show markings similar to Chinese geomancers' compasses in regard to declination). (Full article...)
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The lifetime of
British writer,
philosopher, and
feministMary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) encompassed most of the second half of the eighteenth century, a time of great political and social upheaval throughout Europe and America: political
reform movements in Britain gained strength, the
American colonists successfully rebelled, and the
French Revolution erupted. Wollstonecraft experienced only the headiest of these days, not living to see the end of the democratic revolution when
Napoleon crowned himself emperor. Although Britain was still revelling in its mid-century imperial conquests and its triumph in the
Seven Years' War, it was the French revolution that defined Wollstonecraft's generation. As poet
Robert Southey later wrote: "few persons but those who have lived in it can conceive or comprehend what the memory of the French Revolution was, nor what a visionary world seemed to open upon those who were just entering it. Old things seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race."
Part of what made reform possible in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century was the dramatic increase in publishing; books, periodicals, and pamphlets became much more widely available than they had been just a few decades earlier. This increase in available printed material helped facilitate the rise of the British middle class. Reacting against what they viewed as aristocratic decadence, the new professional middle classes (made prosperous through British manufacturing and trade), offered their own ethical code: reason, meritocracy, self-reliance, religious toleration, free inquiry, free enterprise, and hard work. They set these values against what they perceived as the superstition and unreason of the poor and the prejudices, censorship, and self-indulgence of the rich. They also helped establish what has come to be called the "cult of domesticity", which solidified gender roles for men and women. This new vision of society rested on the writings of
Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as
Adam Smith, who had developed a theory of social progress founded on sympathy and
sensibility. A partial critique of the rationalist Enlightenment, these theories promoted a combination of reason and feeling that enabled women to enter the public sphere because of their keen moral sense. Wollstonecraft's writings stand at the nexus of all of these changes. Her educational works, such as her
children's bookOriginal Stories from Real Life (1788), helped inculcate middle-class values, and her two Vindications, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), argue for the value of an educated, rational populace, specifically one that includes women. In her two novels, Mary: A Fiction and Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, she explores the ramifications of sensibility for women. (Full article...)
... that philosopher George Pitcher adopted a stray dog and her puppy that he took everywhere, including on a trip to France aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2?
... that Chinese physician Yu Yan described theories like yinyang and the
five phases as "simply all lies, absolutely not factual, and completely groundless"?
... that the book Working from Within details how
W. V. Quine only began to use the term "
naturalism" years after he had already developed the key tenets of the philosophy?
... that ancient Greek philosopher
Xenophon thought the alopekis was part dog, part fox?
French socialist and sociological thought, in particular the thought of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Marx believed that he could study
history and
society scientifically and discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Some followers of Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist
revolution is inevitable. However, Marx famously asserted in the eleventh of his
Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it", and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to alter the world. Consequently, most followers of Marx are not fatalists, but activists who believe that revolutionaries must organize
social change.
In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on
mathematics,
logic, and
physics. He wrote the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), with his former student
Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in
mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by
Modern Library. (Full article...)
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in
phenotype. It is a key mechanism of
evolution, the change in the
heritabletraits characteristic of a
population over generations.
Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with
artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not.
Variation of traits, both
genotypic and
phenotypic, exists within all populations of
organisms. However, some traits are more likely to facilitate
survival and
reproductive success. Thus, these traits are passed onto the next generation. These traits can also become more
common within a population if the environment that favours these traits remain fixed. If new traits become more favored due to changes in a specific
niche,
microevolution occurs. If new traits become more favored due to changes in the broader environment,
macroevolution occurs. Sometimes,
new species can arise especially if these new traits are radically different from the traits possessed by their predecessors. (Full article...)
Childish and Thomson have issued several manifestos. The first one was The Stuckists, consisting of 20 points starting with "Stuckism is a quest for
authenticity". Remodernism, the other well-known manifesto of the movement, opposes the deconstruction and irony of
postmodernism in favor of what Stuckists refer to as the "spirituality" of the artist. In another manifesto they define themselves as anti-anti-art which is against
anti-art and for what they consider conventional art. (Full article...)
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Title page of the original Danish edition from 1843
Either/Or (
Danish: Enten – Eller) is the first published work of Danish philosopher
Søren Kierkegaard. It appeared in two volumes in 1843 under the
pseudonymous editorship of Victor Eremita (
Latin for "victorious hermit"). It outlines a theory of human existence, marked by the distinction between an essentially hedonistic,
aesthetic mode of life and the ethical life, which is predicated upon commitment.
Either/Or portrays two
life views. Each life view is written and represented by a fictional author, with the prose reflecting and depending on the life view. The aesthetic life view is written in short essay form, with poetic imagery and
allusions, discussing aesthetic topics such as
music,
seduction,
drama, and
beauty. The ethical life view is written as two long letters, with a more argumentative and restrained prose, discussing
moral responsibility,
critical reflection, and
marriage. The views are expressed as lived experiences embodied by the "authors". The book's central concern is
Aristotle's primal question, "How should we live?" His motto comes from
Plutarch, "The deceived is wiser than one not deceived." (Full article...)
The volume contains a number of arguments. However, four themes have a central role in the overall work. The first theme given treatment in the analysis is that the
lust for power is a part of human nature. Second, the work emphasises that there are different forms of social power, and that these forms are substantially interrelated. Third, Power insists that "organisations are usually connected with certain kinds of
individuals". Finally, the work ends by arguing that "
arbitrary rulership can and should be subdued". (Full article...)
Reich's work on character contributed to the development of
Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), and his idea of muscular armour—the expression of the personality in the way the body moves—shaped innovations such as
body psychotherapy,
Gestalt therapy,
bioenergetic analysis and
primal therapy. His writing influenced generations of intellectuals; he coined the phrase "the
sexual revolution" and according to one historian acted as its midwife. During the
1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of The Mass Psychology of Fascism at police. (Full article...)
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Gargi Vachaknavi (Sans: गार्गी वाचक्नवी (
Devanagari); Gargi Vacaknavi (
HK)), was an ancient Indian sage and
philosopher. In
Vedic literature, she is honoured as a great
natural philosopher, renowned expounder of the Vedas, and known as
Brahmavadini, a person with knowledge of Brahma Vidya. In the Sixth and the eighth
Brahmana of
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, her name is prominent as she participates in the brahmayajna, a philosophic debate organized by
King Janaka of
Videha and she challenges the sage
Yajnavalkya with perplexing questions on the issue of atman (soul). She is also said to have written many hymns in the
Rigveda. She remained a celibate all her life and was held in veneration by the conventional
Hindus.
Gargi, the daughter of sage
Vachaknu in the lineage of sage
Garga (c. 800-500 BCE) was named after her father Gargi Vachaknavi. From a young age, she evinced a keen interest in Vedic scriptures and became very proficient in fields of
philosophy. She became highly knowledgeable in the
Vedas and Upanishads in the Vedic times and held intellectual debates with other philosophers. (Full article...)
Cochrane's work forms part of the political turn in
animal ethics—that is, the emergence of academic literature exploring the
normative aspects of human/nonhuman animal relationships from a
political perspective. He is known for his interest-based account of animal rights, a theory of
justice according to which animals have
rights based on their possession of normatively-significant interests. The account is a two-tiered one, with individuals' strong interests grounding prima facie rights, and some prima facie rights becoming concrete, or all-things-considered, rights. In this picture, the violation of concrete rights, but not necessarily prima facie rights, represents an
injustice. In particular, Cochrane argues that
sentient animals' interests against suffering and death ground prima facie rights against the infliction of suffering and death. These prima facie rights convert to concrete rights in, for example,
animal agriculture and
animal testing, meaning that killing nonhuman animals or making them suffer for these purposes is unjust. (Full article...)
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The third circle of hell is depicted in
Dante Alighieri's Inferno, the first part of the 14th-century poem Divine Comedy. Inferno tells the story of Dante's journey through a vision of the
Christian hell ordered into nine circles corresponding to classifications of sin; the third circle represents the sin of
gluttony, where the souls of the gluttonous are punished in a realm of icy mud.
Within the third circle, Dante encounters a man named
Ciacco, with whom he discusses the contemporary strife between the
Guelphs and Ghibellines in
Florence; the circle is also inhabited by the three-headed hound
Cerberus, who torments sinners by rending them apart. (Full article...)
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A marble head of Socrates in the
Louvre (copy of bronze head by
Lysippus)
Socrates (/ˈsɒkrətiːz/;
Greek: Σωκράτης;
c. 470 – 399 BC) was a
Greek philosopher from
Athens who is credited as the founder of
Western philosophy and as among the first
moral philosophers of the
ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of
classical writers, particularly his students
Plato and
Xenophon. These accounts are written as
dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the
Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the
Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of
impiety and corrupting the youth. After
a trial that lasted a day, he was
sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape.
Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity. They demonstrate the Socratic approach to areas of philosophy including
epistemology and
ethics. The Platonic Socrates lends his name to the concept of the
Socratic method, and also to
Socratic irony. The Socratic method of questioning, or
elenchus, takes shape in dialogue using short questions and answers, epitomized by those Platonic texts in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine various aspects of an issue or an abstract meaning, usually relating to one of the virtues, and find themselves at an
impasse, completely unable to define what they thought they understood. Socrates is known for
proclaiming his total ignorance; he used to say that the only thing he was aware of was his ignorance, seeking to imply that the realization of our ignorance is the first step in philosophizing. (Full article...)
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Eureka (1848) is a lengthy
non-fiction work by American author
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) which he subtitled "A
Prose Poem", though it has also been subtitled "An
Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe". Adapted from a lecture he had presented, Eureka describes Poe's intuitive conception of the nature of the
universe, with no antecedent scientific work done to reach his conclusions. He also discusses man's relationship with
God, whom he compares to an author. Eureka is dedicated to the German naturalist and explorer
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859).
Though Eureka is generally considered a literary work, some of Poe's ideas anticipate 20th-century scientific discoveries and theories. Analysis of Eureka's scientific content shows congruities with modern cosmology, stemming from Poe's assumption of an evolving Universe. (Full article...)
The book went through five editions in its first year. Reviewers generally commented that the book was favorable to Erhard, and a number of critics felt that it was unduly so, or lacked objectivity, citing Bartley's close relationship to Erhard. Responses to the writing were mixed; while some reviewers found it well written and entertaining, others felt the tone was too slick, promotional, or hagiographic. (Full article...)
Pythagoras of Samos (
Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος,
romanized: Pythagóras ho Sámios,
lit. 'Pythagoras the
Samian', or simply Πυθαγόρας; Πυθαγόρης in
Ionian Greek; c. 570 – c. 495 BC) was an ancient
IonianGreek philosopher,
polymath and the eponymous founder of
Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in
Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of
Plato,
Aristotle, and, through them, the
West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to
Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal,
ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included aspects of
vegetarianism.
The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the "transmigration of souls", which holds that every
soul is
immortal and, upon death,
enters into a new body. He may have also devised the doctrine of musica universalis, which holds that the
planets move according to
mathematicalequations and thus resonate to produce an inaudible symphony of music. Scholars debate whether Pythagoras developed the
numerological and musical teachings attributed to him, or if those teachings were developed by his later followers, particularly
Philolaus of Croton. Following Croton's decisive victory over
Sybaris in around 510 BC, Pythagoras's followers came into conflict with supporters of
democracy, and Pythagorean meeting houses were burned. Pythagoras may have been killed during this persecution, or he may have escaped to
Metapontum and died there. (Full article...)
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Roman copy of a Hellenistic bust of Chrysippus (
British Museum)
Chrysippus of Soli (/kraɪˈsɪpəs,krɪ-/;
Greek: Χρύσιππος ὁ Σολεύς, Chrysippos ho Soleus;
c. 279 –
c. 206 BC) was a
GreekStoicphilosopher. He was a native of
Soli, Cilicia, but moved to
Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of the Stoic philosopher
Cleanthes. When Cleanthes died, around 230 BC, Chrysippus became the third head of the Stoic school. A prolific writer, Chrysippus expanded the fundamental doctrines of Cleanthes' mentor
Zeno of Citium, the founder and first head of the school, which earned him the title of the Second Founder of Stoicism.
Chrysippus excelled in
logic, the
theory of knowledge,
ethics, and
physics. He created an original system of
propositional logic in order to better understand the workings of the universe and role of humanity within it. He adhered to a
fatalistic view of
fate, but nevertheless sought a role for personal
agency in thought and action. Ethics, he thought, depended on understanding the nature of the universe, and he taught a therapy of
extirpating the
unruly passions which depress and crush the soul. He initiated the success of Stoicism as one of the most influential philosophical movements for centuries in the
Greek and
Roman world. The linguistic orientation of Chrysippus' work made it difficult for its students even within the Stoic school. (Full article...)
Image 24The Buddhist
Nalanda university and monastery was a major center of learning in India from the 5th century CE to c. 1200. (from Eastern philosophy)
Image 38The philosopher
Pyrrho of
Elis, in an anecdote taken from
Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism
(upper)PIRRHO • HELIENSIS • PLISTARCHI • FILIVS translation (from Latin): Pyrrho • Greek • Son of Plistarchus
(middle)OPORTERE • SAPIENTEM HANC ILLIVS IMITARI SECVRITATEMtranslation (from Latin): It is right wisdom then that all imitate this security (Pyrrho pointing at a peaceful pig munching his food)
(lower)Whoever wants to apply the real wisdom, shall not mind
trepidation and misery
Image 3Oscar Wilde reclining with Poems, by
Napoleon Sarony, in New York in 1882. Wilde often liked to appear idle, though in fact he worked hard; by the late 1880s he was a father, an editor, and a writer.
Image 17The center third of Education (1890), a stained glass window by
Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios, located in Linsly-Chittenden Hall at
Yale University. It depicts
Science (personified by Devotion, Labor, Truth, Research and Intuition) and
Religion (personified by Purity, Faith, Hope, Reverence and Inspiration) in harmony, presided over by the central personification of "Light·Love·Life".
Philosophy ponders the most fundamental questions humankind has been able to ask. These are increasingly numerous and over time they have been arranged into the overlapping branches of the philosophy tree:
Aesthetics: What is art? What is beauty? Is there a standard of taste? Is art meaningful? If so, what does it mean? What is good art? Is art for the purpose of an end, or is "art for art's sake?" What connects us to art? How does art affect us? Is some art unethical? Can art corrupt or elevate societies?
Epistemology: What are the nature and limits of knowledge? What is more fundamental to human existence, knowing (epistemology) or being (ontology)? How do we come to know what we know? What are the limits and scope of knowledge? How can we know that there are other minds (if we can)? How can we know that there is an external world (if we can)? How can we prove our answers? What is a true statement?
Ethics: Is there a difference between ethically right and wrong actions (or values, or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right, and which wrong? Do divine commands make right acts right, or is their rightness based on something else? Are there standards of rightness that are absolute, or are all such standards relative to particular cultures? How should I live? What is happiness?
Logic: What makes a good argument? How can I think critically about complicated arguments? What makes for good thinking? When can I say that something just does not make sense? Where is the origin of logic?
Metaphysics: What sorts of things exist? What is the nature of those things? Do some things exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the relationship of the mind to the body? What is it to be a person? What is it to be conscious? Do gods exist?
Political philosophy: Are political institutions and their exercise of power justified? What is justice? Is there a 'proper' role and scope of government? Is democracy the best form of governance? Is governance ethically justifiable? Should a state be allowed? Should a state be able to promote the norms and values of a certain moral or religious doctrine? Are states allowed to go to war? Do states have duties against inhabitants of other states?