For more information try a book or magazine search |
|||||||||
|
| ||||||||
Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.) Athenian philosopher who allegedly wrote down none of his views, supposedly from his belief that writing distorts ideas. His chief student, Plato, is the major source of knowledge about his life. Socrates questioned Athenians about their moral, political, and religious beliefs, as depicted in Plato's dialogues; his questioning technique, called dialectic, has greatly influenced Western philosophy. Socrates is alleged to have said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." In 399 B.C., he was brought to trial on charges of corrupting the youth and religious heresy. Sentenced to die, he drank poison.
Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) (1623-77) Dutch-born philosopher expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community for heresy in 1656; he was attacked by Christian theologians 14 years later. In Ethics , Spinoza presents his views in a mathematical system of deductive reasoning. A proponent of monism, he held - in contrast to Descartes - that mind and body are aspects of a single substance, which he called God or nature.
Thales of Miletus (c. 636-546 B.C.) Regarded as the first Western philosopher, this pre-Socratic monist thinker is said to have believed that the fundamental principle of all things, or universal substance, is water. All of his writings are lost.
Unamuno, Miguel de (1864-1936) The major Spanish philosophical thinker of his time. Unamuno criticized philosophical abstractions such as "man" for ignoring concrete men. He held that reason by itself is virtually useless and cannot reveal the basic fact of human immortality. He wrote The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations .
Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) (1694-1778) French philosopher, essayist, and historian; one of the major thinkers of the Enlightenment. A Deist who was anti-Christian, Voltaire widely advocated tolerance of liberal ideas and called for positive social action. His novel Candide is a parody of the optimism of Leibniz.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947) British philosopher and mathematician who worked with Bertrand Russell. Whitehead tried to integrate twentieth-century physics into a metaphysics of nature.
William of Ockham (Occam) (c. 1285-1349) Franciscan monk and important English theologian and philosopher. In his nominalism, he opposed much of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and of medieval Aristotelianism; he also rejected the pope's power in the secular realm.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951) Austrian-born philosopher who spent the last 20 years of his life in England. Wittgenstein was one of the most influential philosophers of the century, primarily through his emphasis on the importance of the study of language. His Tractatus Logico Philosophicus influenced analytic philosophy. His later views emphasized that philosophic problems are often caused by linguistic confusions.
Zeno of Elea (c. 490-430 B.C.) Pre-Socratic philosopher and disciple of Parmenides. Zeno argued that motion, change, and plurality are logical absurdities and that only an unchanging being is real. His four arguments against motion (Zeno's paradoxes) attempted to demonstrate logically that the notions of time and motion are erroneous.
Zeno (of Citium) the Stoic (c. 334-262 B.C.) Greek philosopher born in Cyprus; the founder of Stoicism.
For more information try a book or magazine search |
|||||||||
|
| ||||||||